Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, a bunch of the locals are doing a little brainstorming, hoping to come up with a pithy slogan or two for posters that will allow them to better sell their alleged movement to the misandrist masses.
The results so far are, well, intriguing. The front-runner, so far, is this highly upvoted one from deluks917, though as you can see it has received some criticism:
Chernab0g’s contribution is short and to the point:
This one from unexpecteditem is a bit perplexing:
And this one from The_Real_Johnny_Utah is, if anything, even more unexpected than the one from unexpecteditem:
SuicideBanana seems to have a little trouble with his pith. Also, “huh?” Cthulufunk tries his best to play the race card, but unfortunately does not seem to be playing with a full deck:
Neofool’s slogan seems a bit defensive:
Oddly, none of them mentioned the “wicked new slogan” that Counter-Feminist Philosopher King Fidelbogen unveiled earlier this year: “Feminism spreads lies like a fly spreads germs.”
It’s frankly quite bizarre that MRAs haven’t SWARMED (get it? get it?) around this slogan yet. Not only is it clearly the greatest slogan since “The Best Part of Waking Up is Folgers in Your Cup,” but it also comes with a little graphic (see here on the right) that someone made for Mr. Bogen.
And no, despite its endearing amateurness it wasn’t put together as a joke by anyone here.
As wonderful as all these slogans are I think we can do a better job than the Reddit MRAs; after all, most of us know a lot more about the MRA than do most MRAs themselves. So have at it!
Oh, and speaking of posters, these have been going up recently in Vancouver. The r/MRer’s aren’t happy about it.
In my experience, masturbation is FAR better than bad sex (which seems to be the dominant form of sex that I find myself getting in situations where I do all the work to get into a relationship with some guy I think is decent and then his horrible misogynist sex crap rears its ugly head. It was so frustrating to deal with on an ongoing basis that, after having met my husband and his very awesome consensual sex standpoint, I would probably have to say that if my husband were to pass away due to unforseen reasons or leave me or whatnot and I found myself single, I’d probably much prefer masturbation to any sort of heterosexual sex that was generally offered in my direction (as unfortunately, the quality of heterosexual sex seems to decline even MORE than average when one is fat, has children, and tends to have a dominant sort of personality). I would probably be ok with not having sex for the rest of my life, really, if the only sort of sex I could reliably have would be pleasureless performative sex for some guy’s pleasure where he makes HIS arousal MY problem.
Ugh.
Plus I really don’t like the idea of having to have sex with a lot of shitty people just to find someone who isn’t a shitty person who I can then be compatible sex-wise with and actually enjoy sex and who doesn’t then get bored of me or decide that the sex was awesome that one time but no, he’s moving on and I shall never enjoy that sex with him ever again.
GIve me my trusty vibrator and a head full of fantasies any day.
Not getting sex on demand is not a travesty on par with starvation, disease, rape, imprisonment, etc. Being celibate is not oppression anymore than not being able to drive a Ferrari is oppression. When you don’t get what you want in life, you do two things: change your behavior and lower your standards. If you instead blame others for your personal failures, nothing will ever improve.
I’m confused as to how having a dominant personality makes the quality of het sex one is offered decline. That certainly hasn’t been my experience. I’m not trying to argue with you as to what your experience has been, just pointing out that it isn’t a universal experience, so making it into a normative statement seems odd.
(I’m not commenting on how being fat or having kids affects the quality of het sex women are offered since I don’t have the relevant life experience to speak to either of those.)
Maybe we mean different things by “dominant personality”? The reason I’m confused is that I feel like having a dominant personality has mostly been a source of privilege for me in terms of the way men tend to interact with me, and I’ve seen the same pattern with friends.
Hey Grumbles, way to go to miss the point entirely. Suicide does not equal dying from lack of sex. The point about sex not being a need, and people not dying from its lack, is to compare it to real needs, like breathing and eating. Do without those and see how long you live. That’s what ‘need’ means in this context. Were you genuinely or willfully missing that?
Once I’d looked up who Christine Chubbuck was (we’re not all Americans here y’know) I was pretty disgusted with you using her as an example of ‘dying from lack of sex’ (even if such a thing existed). She had depression and her focus on her lack of a romantic relationship was just one aspect of that. God on a pogo stick, you can find that much out just from good ol’ Wikipedia – and you bring her up to act as some sort of example of your nonsensical claim? Charming, just charming.
Amazing how many virgins have lived long and happy lives and never wailed about “oh noes, I will DIIIIIEEEE if I don’t have sex!”
Maybe it’s because they were adults rather than being stuck in adolescence all their lives.
(NB that is not a jab at anyone who is unhappily single, it’s specifically about this ‘no sex = death’ crap.)
Cassandra – what’s the bet MRAs don’t know the difference between a dominant personality and a domineering one? Because this article’s description of a domineering type sounds sooooo much like the MRM loserdom.
Well, yeah, MRAs think that not a doormat = domineering bitch. I’m curious about what dualityheart means, though, because it may be a difference in life experience based on other factors, or we may just be talking about completely different things and thus talking past each other.
Akk, I was trying to find where the dominant comment came in and kept missing it – talk about purblind! ::blushes::
@Cassandra- this has merely been my personal experience. I have a very dominant personality (I take charge, I’m not super controlling, but I am very far from submissive and need to have a say in most things that involve me, etc). I also have certain trauma things from being raped/forced into sex stuff I didn’t want to do in the past, so it makes me less “open minded” (read: I won’t let guys come on my face/in my eyes, choke me with their cock and call it “deep throating”, and no one gets to put their dick in my butt because I haven’t been convinced that most guys who have been interested in me sexually know enough about pleasuring the vaginal area to shove an unlubed penis in my anus) about sex.
Perhaps I am simply ugly or otherwise unattractive to decent men who enjoy sex (it might also be my ridiculously large breasts, which seem to make men think that I’m some kind of bimbo or “whore” due to their absurd size). But I suspect that it’s generally because a whole lot of heterosexual men have internalized misogynistic sexual tropes/arousal factors and even if they are egalitarian outside of the bedroom, they pull out the gonzo bullshit when the pants come off.
@aworldanonymous:
Where did I say anything about anyone being owed sex? You’re putting words into my mouth. Well, not my mouth, since I’m typing, but you know what I mean. Should I presume that you think people owe it to society to stay alive or some shit like that? Death is always a valid choice.
By that definition I’m not “open minded” either, at all (and I really hate how manipulative it is for men to frame things that way when a woman is making it clear that she’s not interested in any particular kind of sex). I guess my confusion is that I can’t see why having a dominant personality would make those kinds of men more likely to pursue a woman, or make them more likely to try to act like that towards a woman they were in a relationship with, since it hasn’t worked that way for me at all.
(Trust me, I know how lucky I am that I’ve rarely had to deal with men acting like that. I hear about that shit from friends all the time.)
I hear you on the boob size thing, though. It’s been less of a problem as an adult, but having people assume I must be “easy” because boobs when I was 12 or 13 and not in any way ready for sex was not a fun experience. It seems to be part of that general sexist dude mentality where if something about a woman is arousing to a man, he thinks that she’s trying to arouse him on purpose and/or responsible for feeling with his feelings.
@aworldanonymous
Trolly troll isn’t actually saying anything, just squatting and dumping. Ignore him.
@Cassandrasays: Exactly. We can agree that it SUCKS to be involuntarily celibate – at least for some people. I mean, people are different, and some people probably come to terms with it easily, while for others it really SUCKS.
It’s just that there’s nothing to do about it. Except masturbation and maybe prostitutes.
The idea that a woman have a duty to sleep with anybody who wants to sleep with HER, unless she can convincingly argue that she doesn’t have to, is just ABSURD.
(On the other hand… I might want to live in that world, considering the fact that I’m a philosophy professor and it’s difficult to get a steady job in that business. I mean, in that world there would be an incredibly high demand for philosophy professors since everybody would want to study philosophy – women in order to learn how to present an unanswerable argument for their right not to sleep with guys they’re not attracted to, and creepy men in order to learn how to find flaws in any argument the women might present to him.)
(No, I’m just kidding, I DON’T want to live in that world.)
@Sgt Grumbles
I may have jumped the gun a bit with the owing sex part, but it doesn’t change the fact that thinking that not getting laid is something worth killing one’s self over is pretty fucking immature.
drashizu: Did the glue-on-hand trick so often in Kindergarten that my teacher made me use a glue stick instead of liquid glue to make me stop. I probably wasted close to half a bottle over the course of the school year. I tried to cover my entire hand and peel it all off without ripping it, but it never worked.
The secret is carpenter’s glue.
Sgt. Grumbles: In both cases, severe halitosis is usually to blame. Listerine won’t treat it; only shotgun mouthwash will suffice.
Whichever way I read that, it’s fucked up.
Either you think these guys are for some reason worth killing, or you think they ought to kill themselves.
Either one, like I said, fucked up.
“(read: I won’t let guys come on my face/in my eyes, choke me with their cock and call it “deep throating”, and no one gets to put their dick in my butt because I haven’t been convinced that most guys who have been interested in me sexually know enough about pleasuring the vaginal area to shove an unlubed penis in my anus)”
I don’t let men do any of those things either, and I never would. Do most people expect this kind of sex? Maybe I’m just a prude.
That would be the point at which you made the rather bizarre claim that a person could die from sex deprivation. We owe to one another that which we would die without.
Sex is not one of those things.
I don’t reckon you did, aworld. “I am owed sex” is one of the immovable planks of the MRA platform, and trolly troll claiming people can die from lack of sex shows he buys into the idea.
@Fembot- These are things that I have been requested, cajoled, whined at, had reciprocation withheld until delivered, etc by certain guys who will remain exes. Most of the “cum in eyes/face/hair/everywhere” stuff was tied to an ex boyfriend who used his depression to blackmail me (read: threatening to kill himself if I didn’t comply) and who made very little to no effort to reciprocate sexually, and who eventually outright raped me in the aforementioned use-breasts-as-masturbation-orifice-and-then-cum-all-over-upper-body thing.
After that experience, I experienced many guys who used similar tactics to ATTEMPT to get me to do sexual things, but I would just cut them out of my life or avoid them without actually getting to the “having to do sex things I hate” part.
Thank goodness for my husband. He has expressed interest in anal play, but I’ve explained to him several times my distaste for the act, and the very specific situations that would have to be in place before he gets to put anything in my butt. He has never pushed the issue- it’s merely come up in casual conversation, and he never pressures me to do sexual things that I don’t want to do. I still don’t particularly like giving oral sex (I don’t particularly get much out of receiving it either, which initially saddened my husband), but the times that I *have* done it, I did it because I *wanted* to and not because I was getting the puppy dog eyes and the guilt trips and the annoying bullshit whining.
Honestly? I could see myself never having sex with someone again, were I to become single. The idea of having to wade through a sea of the types of goons that seem to be the only type of person interested in me and have to endure their constant sexual whining and sniping and Demands that I do things I hate because their poor cock NEEDS it, etc. Even if I had the good sense not to actually DO anything with these douchetards, the experience would really wear me down and stress me out. At least my vibrator doesn’t give me any sassback.
@The Kittehs
I disagree. I think sex is an emotional need. You won’t die without it, but like other basic components of human contact, without it, life sucks.
@dualityheart
I went through some traumatic experiences as a kid because of the war. Cognitive therapy can help.
I’ll play devils advocate for a second here. I didn’t read the article everyone is commenting on, but if I had to define “sexual equality” I would define it as the legal right to make sex a straightforward financial transaction.
If its socially, and legally acceptable for a man to pay for dates on the assumption of sex, it should be equally socially, and legally acceptable for him to skip the date.
Good thing it’s not socially or legally acceptable for men to pay for dates with the assumption of sex!
That’ll be news to the Dalai Lama. Also, millions of other single but happy people.
Diogenes – For the “socially…acceptable” part – that doesn’t appear to be all that common – it would not be a safe assumption for anyone to make. For the “legally acceptable” part, I’m assuming you mean escorts, since that’s basically how that works – and if you pay for the date and she refuses sex, this is something you should take up with the escort service.
I’m not understanding what you mean about “acceptable for him to skip the date”. Do you mean he should be able to skip the date and just force her into bed right away (which would fit MRM philosophy, but not fit logically with the first part of your sentence)? Or do you mean that if he suspects he won’t get sex after paying for dinner, he ought to be allowed to not invite her on a date in the first place? In which case, I would be very curious if you could find a female who wouldn’t wildly agree with you on that point.