Our old friend over at the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog is angry again. This time he’s mad at a legitimate target: National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre. But not because LaPierre is the head of an organization that has stood athwart every attempt at sensible gun control, making tragedies like the one in Newtown an all-too-predictable side effect of the easy availability of semiautomatic weaponry.
No, Mr. Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech is made at LaPierre because he thinks the NRA big gun has turned into a feminist. No, really. Noting that in the wake of the Newtown shootings LaPierre launched a transparently opportunistic attack on violent video games, Mr. PMAFT accuses him of doing the work of the grand feminist conspiracy against men and manhood:
The most important reason why LaPierre is wrong is because what he is doing is feminist. Video games are an activity predominately enjoyed by men. So are guns. Both activities are under attack from feminists (just like other predominately male activities like science fiction are) because men are interested in them and women are mostly not interested in them. LaPierre is shooting himself in the foot (pun intended) by alienating allies among the video game community and helping out feminists in their war on male activities.
Never mind that nearly half – 47% — of those playing video games these days are girls and women, according to the Entertainment Software Association. (I await the inevitable comment from a troll telling us all that whatever games these women are playing just don’t count because blah and blah.)
What LaPierre should have done is form an alliance with the video game community. While the Newtown shootings are being used against gun owners right now, the next target will be video games and other mostly male interests and activities. Both the video game community and the gun community are fighting the same enemy, feminism. They should be working together to point out facts like how the Newtown shooter was raised by a single mother and how homes where the father is kicked out lead to more violence.
Never mind that the shooter — like virtually all mass shooters — was a dude; a woman is always to blame.
The NRA is in a position of weakness now because they are attacking video games and not the real causes of the Newtown tragedy, single motherhood and feminism. The NRA is in the same boat as the Republican Party where it needs to become an explicitly anti-feminist and pro-mens rights organization to survive. (Lots of conservative and right wing organizations are in this situation.) Guns aren’t the problem here, but neither are video games. The NRA needs to realize this and realize that its only way forward is by fighting feminism. Anything else leads the NRA to irrelevance.
So one of the most powerful lobbies in American politics needs to team up with a Men’s Rights “movement” that can’t organize a single event that draws a crowd bigger than 8 people, or else it will fade into irrelevance?
I dearly hope the NRA fades into obscurity, and I am hopeful that public opinion about guns is beginning finally to shift in the right direction, but I’m not sure the NRA needs any pointers from MRAs on political relevance.
Anyone else notice this gem?
“I know females can’t handle FPSs because many of my gamer friends have trophy girlfriends, and they scream and turn there heads away when Halo is played.”
Oh sure they have trophy girlfriends, yeah, OK. And they go “EEEEEEE!” when the see violence in videogames…or a mouse.
Boys, women see blood every month. ‘Course, that would have occurred to you if you knew any women aside from your mothers. Also, what, the prettier the woman, the wimpier she is? Fucking wish fulfillment. Most of you couldn’t handle a cramp without breaking into tears — ’cause, listen to this– our threshold for pain is greater than yours.
For fuck sake. And these twits blame their hobbies on not getting dates.
I missed that, but it is an awesome visual! I picture it in that old-fashiones girl/elephant sees a mouse!
Way.
Some Gal, I read
and looked up to see if your previous comment was “No way.”
I was kinda cool in the late 80’s.
Ah, I missed a Pell showing. Alas.
We used to be more serious gamers, but we fell off right around 2000 and are now pretty much social gamers only, and most of the folks we know who play do so with newer games that I have no interest in.
The only new game we’ve played since is Castle Crashers, and that’s not me playing it. (Sneak discovered you could play a pink knight who wields a giant lollipop and shoots rainbows and heart arrow, and zie was on it like Nintendo.)
@clairedammit
Well, in my previous comment, there was no “way”.
(I’m gonna have to hide with shame for making that “joke.”)
@clairedammit: Death in Vegas! Love! Vegas baby, Vegas!
@Melody: Wow, you’re cat look like my cat Alice.
“Sneak discovered you could play a pink knight who wields a giant lollipop and shoots rainbows and heart arrow, and zie was on it like Nintendo.”
And this is why Sneak is my favorite superhero! Attack of the lollipops! Run away!!
/random goofiness
*ahem* your cat…no contraction needed.
Ignoring the Pell derail and going back to the MLP conversation…
This is so depressingly true. It’s also why they’re so exceptionally nasty to men who’re less gender-conforming. Sometimes I want to say, guys, seriously, it’s OK. The world will not end if you do something that’s traditionally coded feminine. But the problem is that a. they’re far too spiky and aggressive to in any way approach and comfort and reason with and b. they hate women too much to listen. If a woman tried the “no, really, it’s OK if you’re not super macho, it won’t make me think less of you” approach they’re so paranoid that they’d just think we were trying to trick them or make them weak so we could do nasty things to them.
My problem with bronies is that some of them seem to feel that in order to make it OK that they like the show they have to prove that the show wasn’t really made for little girls, it was secretely made for them. Because obviously nothing that’s really good could have been made for girls. Some of them are fine, but some of them are definitely not helping the cause of breaking down negative ideas about gender at all.
“our threshold for pain is greater than yours.”
Ahhh, are you saying that human women are masochists ;), is that what you are saying? Mmmm, affirmation hehehe 😛
Pain threshold =/= how much someone enjoys pain, sexually or otherwise. This is basic stuff.
It’s almost like he’s actively looking for excuses to hurt women…
Never!
And ABNOY admits he’s a sadist!
Cassandra — my not-an-ex has attempted to get me into MLP and I am ashamed to say that “but it’s for little girls! And pink! And stuff!” is a good it of why I just can’t be arsed to watch it (that and catching up on three seasons would take awhile)
*goes to the corner of shame*
It’s almost funny though, fuck gender roles was a major source of conversation before grad school made zir silly busy, yet I go all “argh, gender roles I don’t want” at MLP.
*returns to corner of shame*
This is where the conversation gets a bit more fine grained. There’s nothing wrong with not really liking things that are pink and sparkly, or feeling like they don’t fit your personality or self-expression. It’s just when that dislike is based on the feminine = bad idea that it becomes a problem.
It’s complicated, but I can certainly go “oh, you like it, well enjoy then” — and I probably should give it a go, I did like the one episode ze played when I spent the night (lol “sure you can come over, but I’m watching the new MLP”, fair turn about for me putting on Doctor Who I guess!)
More a hang over from a childhood of grumbling at girl things than logic, ergo why I’m sitting in the corner of shame. So thank you for trying to justify it with how sparkles aren’t everyone’s taste, but no, I deserve the corner of shame on this one. I can come over of it when I give the show a half chance instead of going DO NOT WANT on unfounded principles.
Hilariously, and awesomely, ze rocked a Pricess Celestria costume for a New Years party — I’m very jealous of the custom corset!
That’s part of what I was trying to get at. You can’t tell the extent to which someone has internalized sexism just by their dislike of a thing (though you can spot patterns over time), because so much of what makes the dislike of certain things a problem is happening inside the head of the person who doesn’t like them.
It turns into even more of a mess when people aren’t self-aware enough to think through why they’re having the responses that they’re having, which may feel instinctive to them.
For everyone else’s brain space those are valid points, except since I live in mine…yeah, I fail on this on. I’m certainly not going to get all “gender roles say I can’t like girly things so you can’t like girly things” nor pull an MRA brony and try to make it about adult men, but I haven’t given it a fair chance because it’s made for little girls and positively dripping with pink sparkles and unicorns (or are there just alicorns?)
I’m generally adverse to pink sparkles because they’re girly…which is a bit complex since hello from the androgynous corner of the room! I’m not sure there is anything so strongly coded as male for me to have similar “gender role too obvious, must flee!” reaction to it. Of course, that’s because society doesn’t see boy things as lesser (fuck, lesser only works as a comparative anyways)
…I did actually like Spike and his Phoenix egg, I really should take a dose of “get the fuck over it” and watch the damned show
Part of this is also that the not-an-ex and I have ridiculously over lapping tastes, but I won’t watch MLP, and ze can barely tolerate Doctor Who (blame Moffat, ze was started on Moffat episodes before I insisted ze at least suffer through Pompeii…it sort of worked)
And again, that’s what I meant! You know what’s going on in your own head, so you know where the antipathy is coming from. Someone outside wouldn’t know that just on the basis of “I don’t like pink and sparkles”, though. Unless a person hates pink and sparkles and everything else coded at feminine, at which point a pattern starts to emerge.
Talking past each other for the win? Sorry!
Clearly we need mood fonts.
@Argenti: Wild guess here (never having seen the show; I don’t know if it’s even on free-to-air here) but d’you reckon your “bleh, pink and sparkles” could have anything to do with the way that combo is so aggressively marketed these days as the be-all and end-all for little girls? I’m thinking of walking into toy sections at places like Target and nearly dying of a saccharine overdose. It’s not the “girly” itself, it’s the narrow idea of “girly”, the limited stereotypes all that BarbieBarbieBarbie pink with extra pink stuff pushes.
Me, I like my pinks dusty rose, thank you, not nuclear-strength lolly. 😉
Kitteh — possibly? It is that combo, not all things girly — my cousin’s 9 year old’s Barbie play house caused me to ask why it had a stove and fridge but no kitchen sink. I’m still trying to figure out how you build a kitchen without a sink! Logical problems > hatred of pink.
And hell, my winter hat is eeyore, complete with floppy ears, and that thing was definitely designed with little girls in mind…or ears are just pink and the pink = girls thing is that strong…
So possibly? Feminine fashion and I are on speaking terms some days, except I’ll still pass on the über-girly — skirt, sure, but black or other neutral please! I certainly don’t hate all things girly, and really, don’t even hate MLP, that would imply I give far more of a shit than I actually do. More like total apathy to its existence, met with my not-an-ex trying to get me to watch it, having a MLP avatar, Princess Celestria costume, and generally being as obsessed as I am with Doctor Who. My refusal to give it a fair shot is definitely “argh it’s all pink sparkly unicorns!” but I don’t really give a shit that it exists other than that ze would probably like not having to explain why ze’s wearing a horn and wings to go with that lovely corset! (Please explain your costume is just generally not thrilling!)
This is half that I still feel like a failure as a whatever-we-are for not knowing wtf an alicorn is…unicorn, Princess Celestria, not the same thing and I fail…