It’s hard to parody Men’s Rights Activists, because no matter how ridiculous your parody is, there’s a good chance that some MRA out there has already said, or written, or sung, something even more ridiculous already.
Not that long ago, a bunch of Man Boobz regulars set out to parody the bizarre, and often inadvertently surrealistic, posters that have been popping up on MRA sites like A Voice for Men and Artistry Against Misandry. It was hard, but I think some of us managed to come up with posters that were even uglier and less coherent than the originals. I especially liked these two, from (respectively) Cliff Pervocracy and Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III.
But alas, we have been outmaneuvered by the all-too-serious poster-makers on A Voice for Men, who have managed to produce posters that make even less sense than our silliest parodies. Take a look at this one, which I believe is the work of an Australian MRA by the name of Roger O. Thornhill.
I mean, really. How can we compete with that?
This is an actual poster that some MRAs think will actually win people over to their cause. How, I’m not exactly sure. What exactly about a cupcake with a tiara is supposed to scream “men’s rights” to random pedestrians who might catch a glimpse of this poster wheatpasted to a hoarding while on their way to work?
For more of Roger’s fine work, see here and here.
Man Boobzers, can you do better?
Or, if you’re not up to that Herculean task, could you at least try to explain just what exactly you think Mr. Thornhill was trying to say with that poster of his?
EDITED TO ADD: I have been asked to contribute a poster myself. So here one is. You can find many more hilarious and incredibly ugly posters at ArtistryForFeminismAndKittens and, of course, in the comments below!
Howard, I’m much more cynical – I tend to think dudes like Steele, despite his assertions that the world is against him, operate under such extreme privilege that when minor things most people encounter multiple times in their life, sometimes every day, like someone disagreeing with them, or someone not thinking they’re the next Shakespeare, it comes as a shock.
I suspect that he never bothered to discuss in great detail all the particulars of his views or his movement (particularly the parts of the movement that include men who advocate for no rapists ever to be convicted and men who think 10 year old sex slaves are victimizing poor old pervs) because deep down he knows the MRM is abhorrent in it’s views on, well, basically everyone. He just assumed Ella agreed with him.
I am glad at least though that he did bother to ask her opinion, rather than just continuing to assume. It shows at least a little bit of recognition on his part that women are people with their own thoughts and opinions, not just sub-people who absorb and expand upon the thoughts and opinions of the men they are romantically involved with.
Which reminds me, the “all women are hoors” proclamation inspired this. http://i351.photobucket.com/albums/q474/Swannykins/Untitled-1-1.jpg I am truly sorry for people’s eyeballs.
As regards Ella: I was convinced, in fairly short order, she existed. I had my doubts at first, but that’s the sort of thing one expects to have when a person suddenly introduces an outside actor to bolster some aspect of credibility.
But, apart from the usual posturing language of the MRA, the details were such that Ella being real seemed credible.
He just assumed Ella agreed with him.
Which actually was the final nail in the coffin of doubt. When he talked about what she believed, and we challenged him he admitted that she hadn’t said any such thing, and he was assuming this was the case; based on what he thought she believed about life in general.
This is where the demonisation of the word, “feminist” by Steel and his ilk comes back to bite them in the ass (much as, “liberal” has done the Republicans). So much venom, and so many lies, about what feminism is/wants/believes/does has been spread that lots of people who are, ideologically aligned with the principles of feminism will deny the label, even say they “aren’t feminists”, or things like, “Feminism (unions) used to be important but society has gotten so much better that they are just fighting pointless battles about trivial things.
Which breeds complacency on the part of dudes like Varpole. Then, when his actual misogyny shows up the baseline feminism which they discounted (because they assumed everyone thinks of feminism in the same twisted way they do… a pervasive cult out to destroy all that is good and manly in the world) also shows up. And they get hurt.
It’s their own fault. They don’t reason well. They don’t define terms. They make sweeping claims, without thinking of how the people who are swept up in them will react.
Because it’s all about stopping, “The Feminists”, and ignoring the women they know, who will also suffer if the things the MRM believes come to pass.
Sucks to be them.
I wonder what the overlap is between women who don’t consider themselves feminist and/or who find the term alienating, and women who are responsive to MRA ideas. I’m betting it’s pretty small.
Short version – most young and middle aged women don’t actively identify as feminists but believe in most of feminism’s underlying concepts. If MRAs think that there are more than a tiny handful of women who aren’t going to recoil in horror when exposed to most MRA sites they’re kidding themselves.
I know that I’m super late to the party, but do MRAs really believe that feminists make men pay for stuff?
I have literally never ever met a single feminist who didn’t advocate everybody paying for their own shit. And I have, in fact, met a tiny number of feminists who were hypocrites — just not that kind.
@Cassandra, the people I know who don’t identify as feminists are extremely confused when they hear about MRA sites. Like really genuinely confused. And then, once they realize what their deal is, they laugh.
I am addicted too. This one is for fans of Star Trek TNG.
http://i.imgur.com/YpsAC.png
Oh, what the heck, one more poster. Inspired by PaulE’s “environmental” rant.
@Hellkell – oh hell no I will not shut up. By the way, did you know lots of women can’t get pregnant (anymore) either? True story. Do you want them to shut up too?
@cassandra – yeah, I was absolutely sure I’d come across this bit of BS.
The convenient idea that it’s somehow better FOR THE CHILD to BE KILLED IN THE WOMB than to be born into a hard world.
Guess who else I heard this from? Some thick-necked monsyllabic eugenicist who claimed that “all disabled people should be aborted because their lives aren’t worth living.” Fuck that busllhit. Who is he to speak for the unborn disabled? Who the hell are you to speak for the unborn in general?
Check your got-born privelege. That goes for all of you.
The only people who can say whether or not they wanted to get born, are conveniently for your side of the debate – silenced.
I bet if you asked a whole bunch of disabled people or poor people if they’d rather have been aborted most will probably say “no”.
It’s one thing to argue bodily autonomy/sovereignty as a principle (which I agree with, and it’s the major reason I AM PRO-CHOICE, there are other reasons too) it’s totally another to pretend that there’s magically NO child in the womb, and nothing is lost in abortion, because “woo! PC jargon!” means everyone studiously avoids using the term “baby”. That is rank, self-serving, hypocrisy.
To you and absolutely everyone else arguing this bullshit false premise – it won’t wash because the scientific understanding of the stages of pregancy is very well advanced.
A lot of natural miscarriages occur within the first three months (the first trimester) when all the precursors of the major organs come into being (the beginnings of the CNS and the beating heart are there by Week 6 of gestation).
By Week 10 the precursors of all major organs are in place, now the developing child is called a fetus Latin for “offspring” / “hatching”.
By the END of the first trimester there IS a baby with all its features in miniature, a beating heart and grasping hands – it is very small and there’s no question that it would NOT be able to survive outside the womb at this point, and it’s still pretty unlikely that it would be sapient, nor that it would feel pain, IMO (re. pain, see below).
Week 13 – 16 the fetus is 6 inches long and making active movements.
By Week 19 – the futus is big enough that its movements can be felt by the mother and others. By this point it’s about 8 inches long and it makes sucking motions with its mouth, has eyelashes and eyebrows and fingernails.
It’s not unreasonable to suppose that fetus acheives some degree of sapience at, or shortly after this stage, as it may respond to external stimuli. Certainly by 22 weeks habituation of fetuses to auditory stimuli has been demonstrated.
(- Leader LR, Baille P, Martin B, Vermeulen E. The assessment and significance of habituation in normal and high risk pregnancies. J Perinatalogy 1991;1 1:25-9
– Hepper PG, Shahdullah S. Development of fetal hearing. Arch Dis Childhood 1994; 71:F81-F87 )
The youngest ever surviving premature baby was born at 21 weeks, premies born at 23 and 24 weeks need intensive care and it’s touch and go, but they often survive.
The cut off for abortion in the UK is this^ blurry premie-survival-line i.e. 24 weeks (6
months).
Rare, so-called “partial birth abortions” (not the medical term for it) occur during or even after this period (in very rare, unusual circumstances – often because of very serious defects and/or medical threat to the mother’s life), in effect these procedures effectively kill the baby.
EEG brain scan research at UCL indicates that babies can almost certainly distinguish PAIN from other stimuli by week 35.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/2610089/at-35-37-weeks-babies-distinguish-pain-from-touch/
The baby is considered “full-term” i.e. ready to be born at the 39th week stage.
So this idea that most of you are putting forward here that there is nothing lost in abortion, and no-one, no PERSON “suffers” is very debatable. Even in the absence of pain, there still may be uncomprehending suffering by the fetus, particularly in later abortions after the middle of the second trimester.
What’s more the argument that abortion is somehow a special ring-fenced bit of ethics / law because the child is INSIDE the mother’s body doesn’t wash, (other than in bodily sovereignty making it the only time another’s life may be ENDED by simple choice).
When a man is FORCED to pay for something they had absolutely no say in (because a man has no reproductive choices POST-conception) that money must first be EARNED by the vast majority of men. They must GIVE UP some part of their (irreplacable) life in earning of it – many men RISK their lives working dirty, dangerous, difficult jobs to pay that child support, (men are 95% of on the job deaths), i.e. men definitely LOSE some of their life maintaining a child whose birth they had no post-conception say over and a number of men lose their entire life doing so.
In the same way that it is UNJUST to FORCE a woman to give up part of her life / risk her life to give birth to a child she does not want, it is UNJUST to FORCE a man to give up part of his life / risk his life to pay for a child he did not want.
It is UNJUST to FORCE anyone to surrender any part of their own life for the sake of someone / anyone else.
Any such sacrifice must ALWAYS be a FREE CHOICE.
The way the law stands right now, it is NOT a free choice, and that is UNJUST.
By the way – it is nonsense to argue that giving the man a CHOICE, somehow forces the woman to care for the child.
NO! it doesn’t! – because if she chooses to give birth to the child she can give it up to state care / fostering / adoption. Another CHOICE that men do not have unless the mother so chooses FIRST.
Shut up, Joe.
Thanks for mansplaining pregnancy, Joe, but we already knew all that. You’re still a selfish git who wants to be able to disown kids because they’re too expensive – actual kids who have needs.
Meanwhile, abortion in the early stages is still literally incapable of causing suffering, and your attempt to appropriate the experience of disabled people is a huge fail.
I like Joe’s “yeah, well lots of women can’t pregnant” try. Yes, but that’s not exactly the point, is it, halfwit?
I wonder if there’s a way to set the spam filter to send comments with excessive CAPS OF GREAT EMPHASIS to moderation. It would be funny to force Joe to stop using them if he wants to keep ranting at us.
His computer should probably have a breathalyzer attached to it. If he blows .08, it won’t turn on.
Poster or GTFO, Joe.
You know, I think Joe is different from most MRAs. Some of his arguments/thought processes come from a reasonable place. (It’s reasonable to want men to have a say in whether an accidental pregnancy turns into a permanent burden – as a woman, that’s how I see the idea of having a child to look after/provide for, and I am guessing that as a guy I would feel the same way).
BUT, he sounds like an MRA because he is working from the same distorted ‘facts’ that they are, and is unable to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. He thinks other activists are the enemy, when really most activists are working for the same thing – for things to be fair.
So Joe, I have hope for you. If you just put some effort into appreciating everyone’s problems, not just your own, you might make a decent activist eventually.
@Pecunium – LOL. That you somehow think that your having changed diapers and also killed people! puts you on some elevated moral plane!
And you have no idea how many kids I have already helped raise. Don’t make assumptions.
Hmmm. So far YOUR positions seem to add up to this:
It’s A-OK to kill or harm anyone that can’t fight back, either for themselves (because they are unborn, or just a baby) or by proxy (because they lack organisations that lobby for them). Which, quite honestly smacks of the worst, most cowardly real politik.
The argument that FGM is more often than not (much) WORSE than male genital mutilation / circumcision is simply a HUGE RED HERRING.
That X is absolutely, heart-wrenchingly, sickeningly awful and utterly wrong is NOT somehow an argument that Y (which is “merely” sickeningly awful and utterly wrong) should somehow be allowed to continue.
No!
Bad thing X must stop.
Bad thing Y must stop as well.
The cessation of these two things is in no way in conflict with one another.
In fact, in this instance they are MUTUALLY SUPPORTIVE.
If, as compassionate human beings, who are naturally fucking disgusted at the mutilation TO ANY DEGREE WHATSOEVER of any baby anywhere anyhow, we can all come together to oppose ALL genital mutilation of unconsenting babies.
Then we form a very powerful bloc to make that change in the world for babies of BOTH sexes – and intersex babies too!!.
How is it that any rational, compassionate person anywhere can argue otherwise?
How can anyone SANE (not a religious nut) argue that stopping male babies being chopped about is somehow a problem?
What’s more:
Contrary to your “Oh ho! circumcised sex is lots of fun” BS. Not always! – many men suffer from serious sexual dysfunction due to their circumsion.
“Respondents reported wide-ranging physical consequences from their circumcisions. Among the most significant were prominent scarring (33%), insufficient penile skin for comfortable erection (27%), erectile curvature from uneven skin loss (16%), pain and bleeding upon erection/manipulation (17%), painful skin bridges (12%), other, e.g. beveling deformities of the glans, meatal stenosis, recurrent non-specific urethritis (20%).”
http://www.noharmm.org/bju.htm
Sometimes male circumcision is so badly botched that the penis is indeed mutilated so badly as to be non-functional sexually, and in some rare cases it is excised completely – see the tragic case of David Reimer, who sadly killed himself, ultimately thanks to a fucked up circumcision:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/reimer/
By the way, in YOUR argument that circumcision does not = genital mutilation, you have unpleasant company:
“There are still many people who like to pretend that infant circumcision and genital mutilation are not the same thing. Some of them apparently work at Indonesia’s health ministry, the Departemen Kesehatan, who recently issued guidelines for ‘safe’ female circumcision and wheeled out a spokeswoman to dispense the following words of wisdom: “I would like to stress that female circumcision is not genital mutilation, which is indeed dangerous. They are two things that are very different.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2011/dec/06/1
The author of the excellent article linked goes on to argue:
“Infant circumcision involves performing surgery without consent to permanently alter an individual’s genitals. In many cases this is done without good medical justification, for example to force the infant to conform to the expectations of a particular religion. Just as we call sex without consent ‘rape’, circumcision without consent or reasonable justification should be called ‘mutilation’.
[B]The practice became popular in the United States as a 19th century tool to stop boys masturbating. Female circumcision is ultimately a brutal means of oppressing women’s sexuality, and male circumcision was intended to achieve the same.[/B]
Writing about the practice in 1978, Karen Paige suggested that, “When a custom persists after its original functions have died, it may be accorded the status of a ritual.” Circumcision failed to stop masturbation, but became engrained in the American consciousness as a bizarre rite-of-passage, a throw-back to the burnings, whippings and cuttings still practised in other tribes around the world.
Divorced from its original purpose, circumcision has become a treatment in search of a disease, and post hoc justifications abound….”
A much more waffly, hand waving article from Naomi Wolf – mainly of value because it trashes the pro-circumcision AAP as a credible source in this debate (its member make mucho $$$$ from circumcision, and would lose out if it was banned).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/cut-or-not-to-cut-male-circumcision-question
N.B. re. FGM
The disgusting practice of Female Genital Mutilation is not one thing.
It is a RANGE of things, all are very bad and wrong, some are worse than others (e.g. the horrific “infibulation”). Not ALL involve removal of the clitoris (Type IV, see wiki extract below). Types I and II, which appallingly do involve clitorodectomy are, sadly, most common.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified four types:
Type 1:
Excision of the prepuce, with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris.
Type 2:
Excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora
Type 3:
Excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation). Sometimes referred to as pharaonic circumcision.
Type 4:
Others, such as pricking, piercing or incising, stretching, burning of the clitoris, scraping of tissue surrounding the vaginal orifice, cutting of the vagina, introduction of corrosive substances or herbs into the vagina to cause bleeding or to tighten the opening.]”
http://www.unfpa.org/gender/practices2.htm#2
@Kim – that’d be half a “thanks” to you from me then. 🙂
Joe, why don’t you go yell at someone who can do something about it?
Kim, does he still sound reasonable? He started out that way, but you can see what he’s devolved to.
He thinks that activism is posting his rants on a blog that mocks misogyny. He’s not too bright.
how the fuck are we talking about fetus and infant rights again. How.
Joe is the boringest troll. Go away, Joe.
@Cloudiah – re. your argument about what is done with foreskins post excsion. It’s utterly irrelevant. Another red herring. You don’t somehow whitewash an evil deed by doing good deeds with the profits.
That’s not how morality and ethics works.
@Bargelsan – you might be able to convince yourself of that garbage, but you’re not fooling ANYONE else.
Clearly, abortion puts the mother’s needs and wants BEFORE that of the unborn child.
In no legal sense is the unborn child considered remotely equal to the mother (in countries that allow abortion).
The facility to the mother to give up her now born baby to foster care, also puts the interests of the child in secondary place to the interests of the mother.
Those CHOICES are legally available to her.
EQUALITY demands that men have similar choices.
If you disagree, then you stand OPPOSED to equality.
@Cassandra – YOU have obviously convinced yourself that no one suffers due to abortion, but you have NO way of proving that. Besides the difficulty of proving a negative and the ins and outs of determining what is and is not suffering / pain when someone cannot SAY so…
There is the extremely inconvenient evidence of – the unborn baby’s body itself.
Observation of other people indicates that it is more probable than not, that someone with a brain and a beating heart, (who responds to external stimuli) suffers when they are injured or die.
Also, there is the argument from degree of suffering. Being poor is one form of suffering but being killed is emphatically WORSE. And I say that as someone who has been poor, (up to and including not really getting enough food when I was growing up), for the vast majority of my life.
Frankly, you are telling yourself comforting lies, so you can hold the moral positions you do and still sleep at night.
Also, *slow handclap* for trying on the ad hominem shame game again.
Once more, Pro-Choice, does not necessarily = Pro-Disownment.
In the exact same way that, Pro-Choice does not necessarily = Pro-Abortion.
You see, feminism has laid out all the groundwork for these moral arguments, all men have to do to get the same / similar rights to women is follow those same tracks and refuse to be swayed, shamed or beaten down.
Men of my generation and later were raised by feminists. We have learned from you. We intend to liberate ourselves, regardless of your permission. 🙂
But hey, he added a new piece of gibberish – “got-born privilege”. That deserves a spot on the same Tumblr where I saw some kid complaining about how Mom is oppressing them with her diurnal privilege by making them wake up for school.
More ranting and attempts to mansplain pregnancy? Sorry, Joe, but saying the same things over and over again doesn’t make them true.
(If you want to learn from feminists, you might start by learning how to construct a coherent argument.)
Joe just reminded me of those overwrought anti-drug PSA from back in the day. “But dad, I learned it from YOU.”
Joe has made it abundantly clear he has learned nothing from feminism.
And yet, you do not say that as someone who has been killed (or aborted if we want to get really technical about it). I don’t see how you can claim being killed is emphatically worse when you have no idea what it’s like to be killed.
For Joe: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3rzphu/