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.
They’re waiting to get you, Inu. Messin’ with your mind.
Blockquotes: minions of Basement Cat.
@inurashii
I do exactly the same thing. (I was torn between the temptation to blockquote you for this and the desire not to tempt fate. I’m going with the latter. They’ll get me, but not on a post complaining about them. You are braver than I.)
I like a lot of what EA said in that, and I also want to say she has no idea what the training is really like.
Again I wouldn’t speak with such authority if I didn’t possess it. If I know anything, it’s the gaming community.
So… you admit to knowing not much of anything?
You can, of course, disprove this, if you can verify your, “tournament rankings”.
Good luck with that, Pell.
“I also want to say she has no idea what the training is really like.”
Big surprise there! Or not…luckily it isn’t really important to her actual point. Soldiers are seen as Manly Men, which is the only part there that’s really relevant.
You listen to Dominant yet? I think I have the cello part…
emilygoddess: Yes, I expect to be there. I don’t know what free time I will have, as I’m supposed to be working quartermaster.
re Diogones: I was reading some naval history today and bookmarked this quotation, because it seemed to sum him up:
blunders, proofs of ignorance and then folly, plenty of zeal but no ability, plenty of gallantry but no sense, arrogance without prudence…
So he’s a teenager? Isn’t that a summary of teenagers in general?
Except Diarhhea the Chronic could not be described as gallant.
Argenti: I think her misunderstanding is important, because it’s a style of thought which dehumanises soldiers.
I really, really want to argue this point, because it’s EA, but your the one with personal experience here. I’m not sure if she was going for “soldiers are kill bots” or “that’s some fucked up shit right there” (she’s a pacifist vegan, so it’s entirely possible she sees war, and thus soldiers, as a Bad Thing)
Two of my favorites —
“I feel as though, if I were to extend my hand just a little toward the pool where the ideas ferment, I could grab at the idea and pull it out of the pool and onto the floor where ideas must stand before the jury of the brain. There, it must present itself, still from the pool, and a bit shivery because new ideas are not given a towel to dry off with, towels being reserved for proven theories; new ideas are simply pulled and stood up, and asked to explain themselves – not a very pleasant thing really, which is why so many people go into the room where the pool is. The exercise is exhausting not to mention a bit difficult to watch, if you are at all a sympathetic creature. What was my idea, anyways?”
That’s from the book, while she’s ranting about “the amnesia drug” aka Ativan aka OMGS do I get her point…wait, what was the point again? (Better than klonopin at least, did I tell you about that fun? Lol, all the irony, let’s discuss memory and then proof I have none!)
“I can explain myself: If you want to be safe, walk in the middle of the street. I’m not joking. You’ve been told to look both ways before crossing the street, and the sidewalk is your friend, right? Wrong. I’ve spent years walking sidewalks at night. I’ve looked around me when it was dark, when there were men following me, creeping out of alleyways, attempting to goad me into speaking to them and shouting obscenities at me when I wouldn’t, and I suddenly realised that the only place left to go was the middle of street. But why would I risk it? Because the odds are in my favour. In the States, someone is killed in a car accident on average every 12.5 minutes, while someone is raped on average every 2.5 minutes. Even when factoring in that, one, I am generously including ALL car-related accidents and not just those involving accidents, and two, that the vast majorities of rapes still go unreported […] And, thus, this is now the way I live my life: out in the open, in the middle of everything, because the middle of the street is actually the safest place to walk.”
Also from her book, and I await the pissed off MRAs.
That quotation says that soldiers are desensitised the value of human life, and that’s the point of the training.
It ain’t so.
There are lots of good arguments to be made about how to deal with the need for armies and the value of human life (and a lot of them go on in the Army), but the claim she makes isn’t one of them.
Just look at me.
Things I’m clearly failing to say properly — I’m taking it as her not wanting the desensitizing attempts to succeed. And idk if they’re just talk or what, but my generation? I knew plenty of people who either wanted to sign up, or did sign up, to “kill some towel heads” — yeah, I went to HS in CT, and plenty of these people were friends of friends who knew someone in the trade towers (or who was supposed to be and wasn’t)
Point here is that wrong or not, I can certainly see where she got that impression from. And honestly…it makes it slightly easier to deal with war from a civilian perspective — that soldiers are basically brainwashed into murder…because at least with the people I went to HS with, the other option was that they wanted to kill, that human life had no value if not the right kind of human.
Idk if this is a generational thing, a civilian vs soldier thing, or just civilian ignorance. Regarding the generational gap, I was 16 when the trade towers feel, which means she would’ve been 21. I don’t know anyone who joined for the GI Bill, not of my generation anyways, nor to serve the country…it was about revenge, which already requires a fair amount of dehumanizing the people you’re trying to take revenge on.
So yeah, she’s wrong about it being the point of training, but I can certainly understand why she’d think that soldiers are desensitized to killing. Of course, if that worked any, we wouldn’t be seeing the PTSD rates we are…
One final thought to this rambling mess, one you’ve heard half of already — I do think plenty of the younger crowd see war as “the ward we’re in now” and either strongly support that (as per the above rant) or think it’s a travesty of human rights. You know which camp I fall in, considering she’s far more of a pacifist than I am…
That got long, and I should expressly say that I don’t think the pre-9/11 soldiers signed up for such petty? inhumane? racist? reasons — I know my cousin did it because of the GI Bill, but that was back at the end of the Cold War.
Eck, that got really long, you should take that more ad my rantings about the current wars than about the military in general. It bothers me that my cousins’ kids have never known an America not at war…and I said 12 years ago now that this mess would take ten or twenty years to clean up, and I wanted to be wrong.
But how much I hate this current mess isn’t really relevant. And now I am going to bed, as clearly my self-censor switch has signed off already!
It’s ok.
So, I was in the army for eight years before, “That Tuesday” and eight years after.
Did the motives of young recruits change? Yes. For a while. Most of them quit (four and out).
Why? Because their motives and the Army’s mores aren’t congruent. I get what she’s trying to say. I even agree with it, but (and this is the part I’m not saying well), the way it’s simplified demonises the wrong things.
There are serious problems with how the military is used, but that’s not a function of training.
There is a serious problem with how soldiers are portrayed (yes, I’m looking at you Andrew Sullivan, who said that a helicopter pilot ought not be happier about helping people than killing them; and that by enlisting he agreed to become a hired gun, and kill/die on the whim of people like Sullivan; who’s not even a US Citizen, but I digress).
But I (and yes, there is a bit of the personal in this) don’t thin saying/implying/accepting the meme, that becoming a soldier makes one a slavering beast is the way to further the discussion; in part because it limits who is willing to take part.
I’ve read some stupid heinous shit from MRAers in my time, but this deserves some kind of award. How these chronically retarded arseholes can consistently misdiagnose absolutely EVERYTHING is beyond me. Hoorah to the Pro-Moron Anti-Intelligence societal misfits for reaching further than any other stupid, ignorant, maladjusted, mental midget in the MRA community has gone before. You go boys!
@inurashii
I’ve spent years happily chuckling when it happened to others, slowly being lulled into complacency. Don’t let it happen to you!!
Sandra, could you try make your points without the disablism in the future? Because it’s kind of fucked up to imply that people with disabilities want to oppress women, and you’re also letting the MRAs off the hook. They know exactly what they’re doing.
(Has Sandra been here before? Because I recall someone with a similar name being all shades of side-eye-y before but can’t remember if it’s her)
Hi Sandra,
I’m disabled and everything you just posted was horrible. Even if I weren’t disabled, it’s still awful and not the sort of thing a decent person should say.
*ignores Sandra*
“Did the motives of young recruits change? Yes. For a while. Most of them quit (four and out).”
That that didn’t last makes me a happy camper — I wouldn’t have wanted those guys in a food fight, forget a fire fight (my HS cafeteria was weird, Army recruiters encouraging that sort was ok, throwing jello nearly got jello banned…fun times!)
As for the rest, it occurred to me while staring at the wall that I think she said that off th cuff, it certainly isn’t from her book. So idk if wtf she said would’ve changed if she could’ve researched the Army instead of just trying to make a point about the song, or not.
Unsurprisingly, that song has gotten shit from some if her feminist “fans” for coming off as too man-hating, so I get why she felt the need to explain it. This is part of why y’all rock btw, pandering to the “you’re too man-hating crowd”? More like dying of laughter at the idea we should give a shit.
(As for “fans” I refuse to count myself among the judgmental set, they’re a bit “with friends like these” — whataboutthemoonz, if this seems remotely relevant, think you can explain wtf I’m failing to say?)
I’ve been an EA “fan” long enough that I actually call myself a Bonny Tyme Pyrate. /hipster
I would have called them “feminist” fans, because tons of her fans seem to think misandry is a real thing in the world. I think MRAs are moving into that fandom 🙁
Basically EA has to spend every waking second apologizing for being pissed off about sexism or else she’s a man-hater, to which I say: whatthefuckwhydoesnoonereadanymoreaaaaaaargh.
@thenatfantastic
She seems familiar to me too. I can’t remember what she said the first time, though. I want to say it was some other -ism, but then I think I’m getting her confused with Ruby or someone else.
I’m gonna stop thinking about it. We have too many drive-by “feminists” here who spout that kind of thing for me to keep up.
I think of them as people who’re too dumb to understand what feminism means. They seem to have interpreted it as “I am asshole, hear me roar”, and that is not how the lyrics actually go.
I will never understand “feminists” who are only out for equality for certain women.
“But I (and yes, there is a bit of the personal in this) don’t thin saying/implying/accepting the meme, that becoming a soldier makes one a slavering beast is the way to further the discussion”
This, so much. I feel like it’s possible to support soldiers and empathize with them while condemning the war. Actually, if you think about it, condemning the war helps soldiers, because if it weren’t for the war, they wouldn’t be risking their lives in the first place 😀
The subject is a bit personal for me too because my sister is in the army (basic training right now). I think she’s so brave to be willing to go through all of that for her country, but the sooner we get out of Afghanistan, the better. I don’t want anything to happen to her.