Today is an auspicious day. For the Men’s Rights Subreddit, which we often write about here on Man Boobz, has won the prestigious World’s Greatest Shitlord Award. Oh, sorry, I mean it won the Subreddit of the Day award on Reddit. Which is, in this case, pretty much the same thing.
Here are some highlights from the official announcement , which I am totally not making up. No, really, you can go look. Someone – that being XavierMendel, one of the mods of r/subredditoftheday — actually wrote these things. And meant them. I AM NOT BEING SARCASTIC THIS IS REAL HOLY SHIT.
The topic at hand today takes a generous turn from our amusing and lighthearted articles of the month. On this, the last day of January, we look at something a bit more worthy to be called an article. /r/MensRights comes up a lot across reddit and, indeed, across the world as being one of the few centers for men’s help. It’s often attacked, and is always the center of one controversy or the other. My questions reflect that. MensRights is, undoubtedly, the home of great activists.
Again. I am not making this up.
There were some people close to me that suggested I not run this article. That the repercussions of doing so would be unreasonably bad. Well, here you go, people. This is my way of saying that a good reporter doesn’t care. A good reporter reports. It’s not in my job to care about consequences.
I’m not sure that Mr. Mendel quite understands the difference between “reporting” and “asskissing.”
/r/MensRights. Never in our society could the uninitiated imagine such a place. A place where feminism is questioned, and our culture is deconstructed to find what it’s really up to.
Hahaha, what? I was not aware that feminism wasn’t ever questioned on the internet, or anywhere else in “our society.” I mean, it’s not like I run a blog that features nearly 500 posts detailing people attacking feminism on the internet, most of them nastily and ignorantly and sometimes using the word “cunt,” and the vast majority of them not on Reddit. And it’s not like this only barely scratches the surface of the subject.
/r/MensRights is one of the last fortifications of free thought to exist on Reddit.
Yeah, that’s why I was banned – not for trolling or harassing or calling anyone names, but for politely if persistently disagreeing with the denizens until then-moderator ignatiusloyola threw a fit.
“Surely you jest,” one might tell me, “when you mean they’re alone in this regard?” No, hypothetical 19th century British gentleman, I do not. I truly mean it when I say that. What other subreddit openly questions feminism? None spring to mind, and I make it my duty to catalog various subreddits. Most end up banned or run down within a month. Only /r/MensRights remains.
Reddit: Bastion of Internet Feminism.
Nobody can say for sure whether or not they’re correct in any single regard. It’s certain that, due to the laws of probability, they’re not correct in every regard. However, it’s also certain that they’re correct in most of them. Occasionally a wackjob or two will suggest that feminism is behind Cinnamon Toast Crunch (The taste you can see!™). The accuser latches onto those wackjobs to denounce the whole movement.
Yeah, it’s not as if comments suggesting that a man allegedly wronged in divorce court should turn to murder got literally dozens of upvotes in r/mensrights, or anything.
Oh wait, they did.
Yeah, it’s not as if Men’s Rights Redditors gave literally hundreds of upvotes to a post about a t-shirt suggesting that men could be convicted of rape simply for being in a room alone with a woman.
Oh wait, they did.
It’s not as if Men’s Rights Redditors regularly give dozens if not hundreds of upvotes to posts from unhinged hate sites like A Voice for Men or Angry Harry,or fall all over themselves praising an internet-famous female MRA who thinks that many abused women “demand” their abuse.
It’s not as if they think “spermjacking” is a real thing in the world that should make all men think twice about ejaculating in the general vicinity of women.
It’s not like … oh, you can find many, many more examples for yourself.
After claiming that “people have died” after being called misogynists, while “nobody ever dies after being called a misandrist,” Mr. Mendel winds up his speech with this stirring conclusion:
I support the struggles of people who are in bad positions. I respect it, in a way, for I have also seen great struggle. My struggle is not over, nor will it end until my death. For I struggle with something that will not go away through legislation or social change. The Men’s Rights Movement, however, struggles with something very changeable. Very malleable, able to be fixed within a generation if so desired. So I will support them, for they have a fighting chance. …
/r/MensRights is controversial for a reason. In the same sense as Jews of the 1890s, Irish of the 1850s, Hispanics of the 1350s, and many more. Each generation has their controversial improvement in society. We’ve gotten off easy so far, but we have to make it happen eventually. As far back as anyone living can remember, the table has been imbalanced in one way or another, favoring men or women. It’s time the table stays level for once. We need equality.
And that’s what /r/MensRights is trying to do.
Oy yoy yoy. There’s so much ridiculousness to unpack there that it makes me tired. I think I’ll go take a nap.
Mr. Mendel followed his stirring introduction with some questions for the denizens of r/mensrights. And there was some discussion. I can’t even. Not right now. I’ll get to all that in a future post.
In the meantime, Skepchick’s Rebecca Watson – who has been on the receiving end of r/menrights’ heroic activism more than once — has her own reaction to the Men’s Rights is the Subreddit of the Day announcement.
@Deoridhe – I must confess, I’ve never read Northanger Abbey. It’s the only Austen book I’ve not read. Also I like Jane Eyre herself, but I get infuriated by the men in the books. I’m glad she stands up for herself and refuses to marry St. John but the whole vibe of her relationship with Rochester bothers me too much to really enjoy the book.
Of course, my personal feelings are, yanno, mine. Hell I own a copy of “Doom” on DVD. So YMMV with regard to my opinions. 😉
@CassandraSays – Every time I read Mansfield Park I want it to end differently. Between Fanny’s utter wimpiness and the cousins thing… yeah.
Persuasion is my favorite Austen book. Second chances at romance? Hero who is human and flawed but also passionate and loyal? Charming cad who’s even more charming and evil than Willoughby? Check, check, check. Also the 1995 adaptation starring Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root is AMAZING. The best Austen adaptation ever IMNSHO.
For the record, I couldn’t read Catcher in the Rye. I tried a couple times and couldn’t get past the first few paragraphs. Add me to the list of haters of that particular book.
@Shiraz – Wine always welcome, I’m in Quebec.
And I can add “editorial writer” to the list, although that stint was very brief. And I did my time as a “Media Relations” person on the other side, so Press Releases and Other People’s Opinions get included in my CV.
@howardbann1ster — well, I actually offered them, which was clearly misandry on my part.
@drst — Persuasion was my sister’s favourite, as well. She even wrote a song about it once. (She also wrote a song about Star Wars. There was a reason her band was called Nerdy Girl.)
Diogenes: Wrong as usual about SSNs. Three seconds of the Google could have told you that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Numbers
And this:
Might be news to you, you naive idiot, but to most of us, it’s old news and easily researchab… that thing you don’t do. Got any other bombs to drop, shitlord?
Bagelsan:
So much truth. He needs a time out.
I will second TKUH’s comment that commenting here can be intimidating for newbies, mostly due the scarily high level of education most of the commentariat seem to possess, but I can’t say that I’ve noticed a whole of ostracizing behavior towards new commenters. I have been a fairly regular lurker here for about a year and honestly, I can say that the regulars here seem to possess an astonishing amount of restraint in dealing with floundering n00bs.
They had to pull out all the stops. Bubble wrap didn’t exist in Austen’s time. 😛
Mean and spiteful? Well, the odd tear occasionally trickles from the corner of my eye when I see how naaasty everyone else is to the Antipodeans here. Such a shame, we’re really quite nice people.
Is that how agreement with this preposterous notion is supposed to sound? I just can’t “make it go” in words that I understand. I tried to follow this logic(?!) that the place is so unwelcoming that all the people who de-lurk every few days don’t want to be here ….. – but that’s waaaay beyond me.
As far as literature, I took a few classes in modern and early modern lit in college, I read Mockingbird in high school, but my main focus was on Chaucer and Shakespeare.
So everyone’s tearing apart books that are too recent for me, in the main.
I will say the MRAs should love Great Expectations, but I doubt many of them have actually read it.
Hey David do you get laid?
Can we point Boring Stick at Mr “Journalist” up there? Since he’s so concerned about the current state of journalism, and all…
As far as how long I’ve been here, I just had a look at the archives from January, 2012, and I remember pretty much most of them. I don’t recognize a lot of posts in December, 2011.
Seems I’ve been lurking and commenting since before Katy Perry stole all of Russell Brand’s money.
Or, in other words, since before all the ads.
I lurked for a few months here before I made my first comment, and even now I don’t comment too often, because usually everything that needs to be said has already been said better by other people. But I find it to be a very welcoming community.
I love Wuthering Heights, but I had an excellent English Lit. teacher who encouraged us _not_ to think about it as a love story or in any way romantic, instead focusing on questions of class and treatment of women. So my reading was more focused on those things. I had also managed to shake of my adolescent love for Dark And Troubled Men by the time I read it, which was probably a good thing. Heathcliff is not exactly the kind of man that would make a good romantic partner. (Aaaahh! Thoughts about why Ana in 50 Shades of Grey is so fucked in the head when it comes to men! “Romantic heroes of classic literature” are generally not personalities that can be adapted into real life.
I love both Dickens and Tolkien. Partially for their wordiness. The above paragraph might show exactly how badly they’ve influenced me…
@Myoo – Yeah, I can rarely steal time from work, and so am just not on the glowy box machine enough to keep up with the conversation, usually. But I lurk because the commentary is great fun.
I can point to the specific post that I remember being the first one here that I thought of as important, and the first time I read the comments. (Anders Breivik) After that I couldn’t stay away, because everything I believed and knew kept showing up in the articles, and pulling me apart.
Sometime in March I had my religious de-conversion.
Then in June I started posting more regularly.
Same. Y’all are so good at being intelligent and snarky, I usually don’t have anything to add.
Ooooh, ooooh, oooh, ooh, ooh! *flails* are we talking about classic novels?!
Well I can tell you straight off the bat that I really didn’t enjoy Wuthering Heights, mainly because I hated pretty damn near every character in the book.
Particularly Heathcliff, how he is regarded as a great romantic hero I’ll never know, he is a cruel, capricious, abusive arsehole who is vile to absolutely everyone including Cathy for absolutely no good reason.
Also so many aspects of the plot annoy the hell out of me, and I think it’s the claustrophobic nature of the book that I dislike as well, you as the reader never see outside of this one bit of blasted moor, it’s like the world outside doesn’t really exist.
I don’t see it as a bad book though, it’s a very important piece of literature.
And you know which writer I hate?
D.H. Lawrence.
Particularly Sons and Lovers which I had to study at 6th form. The main character, oh god he is the whiniest, most self-pitying, self destructive arsehole ever written, he is a dick to all the women he sleeps with and has a really odd relationship with his mother and spends his whole time moping about how terrible his life is when it is, really, really not that bad. And it’s basically autobiographical which means I hate D.H. Lawrence even more.
Oh and I don’t like Dickens.
I do, however, love Austen and I also adore pretty much everything George Elliot wrote and W. Somerset Maugham is another favorite.
Oh and I just finished re-reading Far From the Madding crowd by Thomas Hardy, that is a brilliant book.
Catcher in the Rye was bad, but at least it wasn’t Lord of the Flies.
English class (as a second language, Quebecois represents!) was really boring until last year advanced English where they let us pick books. I went for Farhenheit 451. Got a bit of a raised highbrow because *sci-fi/fantasy* y’all! That’s not *litterature* dontcha know?
Somehow English class also made me hate Animal Farm, but I got better once I could read it without it being an assignment.
@BlackBloc
When I was 12ish, I tried to pick Animal Farm for my advanced reading group and they overruled me so we read some schlocky teen horror novel. I didn’t end up finally reading it until I was in my 20s. Good book. We read Lord of Flies in the same group and I really loved it, but I haven’t ever bothered to go back and revisit it so who knows what I’d think now.
@everybody
Thanks for the great links. I know if I try to say something about them individually, I’ll miss one, but this thread has had great stuff from baby clothes to film so thanks.
Oh, I absolutely hated Jude the Obscure. Haven’t really tried any other Thos Hardy book.
Similarly, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy was just too much.
I got to read Animal Farm and Slaughterhouse 5 for a high school project, and in 8th grade we read and were shown a movie of Lord of the Flies.
I can say that Mel Gibson wasn’t all that great in his Hamlet movie, but I was inclined to say he was too old to play the Dane until I saw Branagh’s budget-buster.
I grew to detest every piece I had to study in both English Literature and Expressive Arts because, although I was such a voracious reader as a child that I actually damaged my eyes with it, I absolutely cannot abide dissecting works to analyse them. I can talk tones, moods, ideas, themes and all that, but when you’re pulling it apart sometimes literally syllable by syllable… just no.
So I hate Jane Eyre, and To Kill A Mockingbird, and anything by Dickens or Plath, and Spiderman films.
You try writing a 2000 word essay on the use of leitmotif with the Green Goblin then tell me you don’t hate it too.
@Historophilia
I am reading D.H. Lawrence now for the first time, and yes, it is weird and self-pitying. I don’t think I hate it (yet?) though.
@thenat: Have I got a t-shirt for you!
(Disclosure: Not a t-shirt I made, though.)
It was my parents fault. As soon as I learned to read I wanted to do it ALL THE TIME. But they used to insist that I had to sleep, so I used to sneak out of bed every single night for about four hours after midnight to read by the glow of the tiny plug-in nightlight. Sat on a little bucket.
I was an odd child. I also spent a good six months sleeping in a cardboard box on the floor because I liked it more than my bed. I wore wellies to do this.