So this weekend I attended an interesting conference on the future of feminism. I’d like to present some of the most insightful papers from it.
Clarification: When I said I “attended a conference” I meant I “took a look at the Men’s Rights subreddit.” By “interesting” I meant “tedious” and by “insightful” I meant “ridiculous.” And by “papers” of course I meant “comments.”
So here, without further ado, are some of the pearls of wisdom I found in a thread asking the twin questions “What, in your opinion, is Feminism’s ultimate goal? When do you think they’ll consider their job ‘done?’” (Each yellow comment is a direct answer to one or both of the questions.)
Boy, these “feminists” sound like terrible people!
What about the proud fembots of Robonia?
So wait, we’re mongolian drow now? But…but…I always play a Dwarf…..
Hail, hail Robonia, a land I didn’t make up!
I thought Robonia was where the hypergamous cock carousel women lived? I mean, if Coilette is anything to go by.
Falconer: This makes me think of Vhaeraun. I’d hate to think that an MRA would come up with this idea, but I could see them going further with the Drow analogy and styling themselves as being like Vhaeraun followers. All about the mans and against the evil womenz matriclitgynocracy (or whatever the -cracy is for today), and splitting off to form their own patriarchal society, “the way it should be”, while being persecuted for being male just like in real life! /sarcasmses
Of course, Vhaeraun’s followers are still just as evil, but MRAs hardly have a history of noticing things like that.
Other musings on Drow stuffs: It’s amazing the messed up stuff you can find in the earlier (and I assume there’s still stuff kicking around now too) parts of D&D. Though i’m not really up on new D&D standard lore, let alone the old stuff, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. “Because Lolth” makes more sense than “because evil wommanz”, and is what i’m used to.
I still tone down Drow society a lot though (at least the standard society model, having more variety is always good). Less betrayal, less distrust, less all-evil-all-the-time, just so their society would actually be functional and not just collapse. Also, less cartoonishness. Drow get a lot of shit for being cartoony evil and stuff, but I like them.
Drow are like a shitty, leaky, broken down old house. Someone made a mistake and let the house get that way, but it has an interesting shape and lots of potential if you put the effort and work in to fixing it. Actually, i’d probably say that about the entirety of D&D, but hey. 😛
(Side note, i’ve always pronounced Eilistraee as “El-iss-tray-ee”, which is close enough to the “official” but sounds better, to me at least – I think the first syllable is actually supposed to be “Eel” rather than “El”).
TL;DR: Blah blah blah D&D stuff, Drow are messed up, MRAs are stupid. Can you tell I like D&D yet? 😛
aworld: You can always be a Duergar. 😛
dualityheart: Having to worship an evil spider goddess is better than the alternative (you get turned into a big half spider, half person monstrosity. 😀 Or you get killed, that happens too). At that point, I think it’s less “how?” and more “why not?”
so am I to understand that NONE of the conspiracy theories involve cannibalism? wtf reddit!
Oh, we can fix that! Maybe use some of our caged man-imals as the main course at the Mongolian victory barbecue?
You two realize they’re going to think you’re serious, right?
I think they imagine this is going to happen:
There is no place on this planet where men are oppressed. Unfortunately, the oppression of women continues. I just watched an excellent documentary on PBS called, Half the Sky, about the oppression of women throughout the world. It’s based on a book by the same name. It’s heartbreaking what some women have to deal with: sex slavery (even for young girls), lack of medical care for pregnancy and childbirth, FGM, lack of education, and no justice in cases of rape. I wish they had highlighted the plight of women like Soraya M. who was stoned to death on the accusation of adultery by the husband who wanted rid of her.
I just read that book. It was OK* until the authors seriously advocated sweatshops as a tool of women’s liberation.
(*the pure stories of what people had achieved were good, the authors are big colonialist ninnyfaces who think that capitalism will solve all problems ever)
I went and read the whole damn thread. These guys are so poisoned by patriarchy that they cannot imagine a world where one gender does not dominate the other, and where women are starting to achieve parity means men are completely oppressed and will be exterminated.
But I can’t see how they are really afraid of their doomsday prophecy, or they wouldn’t be posting and attracting attention.
Pillowinhell: for real. The first thing the Gynocradictatorship will do is shut down their means of communication!
I call this the ‘OwlSlave paradox’.
Also gynocradictatorship is a long word and hard to pronounce. As a replacement, may I suggest ‘gascism’?
Wow. This thread has taken on a fun science-fictiony/fantasy/ Twilight Zone kind of air.
Any of you guys ever read “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” by Alice Sheldon? Is that what these morons have in mind? *chuckles*
Coming into this waaaaaaaay too late, but here is grumpy cat:
Hmm…apart from some of the colourful rhetoric, I can’t see how most of these comments don’t hit the nail pretty much on the head. Feminism does basically aim to secure as many goodies for woman as possible. In that sense it is business-minded, and out to get for women as much money and power as possible. Take this from the UK’s ‘The Guardian’ in August 2011:
Women’s Charities GainFunding for Male Abuse Victims
The Home Office has announced that funding allocated to services for male victims of domestic and sexual violence will mostly go to women’s charities.
The Government allocated £225,000 to a male victim fund for 2011-2013 which represents just over half a per cent of the £40m it has ring-fenced up to 2015 for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services, rape crisis centres, the national domestic violence helplines and the stalking helpline.
The male victim fund has now been allocated to 12 local charities across England and Wales but only one award went directly to a dedicated charity just for male victims. The other charities to win funding include North Derby Women’s Aid, The Women’s Support Network and a number of local services specialising in work with female victims. Futhermore, only one-third of the awards went to fund projects which would provide support to men who were the victims of abuse from a female partner or relative.
Specialist men’s charities said they ‘dismayed but not surprised’ by the move, as they had previously been excluded from accessing the existing Ministry of Justice Rape Support Fund after UK Rape Crisis secured a proviso that only organisations providing a dedicated women’s service could apply to that fund – thereby excluding organisations that specialize in helping male survivors from applying.
Dedicated men’s services who applied unsuccessfully to the 2011-2013 male victims fund include The Men’s Network, The ManKind Initiative, Mankind Counselling, Survivors Manchester and Working With Men.
@CassandraSays – That’s why it’s fun!
@natfantastic: I’m good with gascism.
BUT I WORSHIP THE RAVEN QUEEEEENNNNNNNNN!!!111!!1
Sorry, that was meant @Shade, also I’m basing everything on the 4.0 campaign I got dragged into.
I had problems with the Drow before I was feminist enough to even notice the whole “evil because women in charge” thing. To wit: the only way to tell an evil race from an otherwise-identical good race is because the evil race has black skin. Not cool, Gygax. This is the Seventies, not the Forties, what were you thinking?
@Seraph
I don’t think there’s any racism/sexism/transphobia in Shadowrun, but then again everything in Shadowrun is morally ambiguous. Which is why it’s my favourite system.
@Freitag: Poor grumpy cat! I would give it all the lovings. At least it looks like its servants are taking good care of it.
@Shade: Yeah, on second thought it was probably always “because Lolth,” but sometimes I gotta wonder, did they choose spiders because they freak people out, or did they choose spiders because that way they got to have a matriarchy? It was probably because spiders freak people out.
There’s an expansion for Dungeons & Dragons Online, which is nominally set in Eberron and presumably does not have drow because this expansion is about taking your characters to the Forgotten Realms to spend half an hour pounding on Lolth’s belly button (she’s so big that’s all you can reach) in the shadow of her ginormous bosom.
I cannot wait to learn gunkata!!! Oppressing the masses is gonna be sweet.