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.
@Kim glad to hear that you’ve got power. I’m not sure what hemisphere you’re in, so I don’t know whether that means that your’e now warm because you’ve got other heating options or whether you can chill because it’s been a tropical storm.
Those were some cool links. I haven’t bought the children’s patterns, yet, but I did buy this during the epattern sale this week: http://www.anniescatalog.com/image.html?prod_id=83632&mode=gallery
I also bought this a couple of months ago: https://www.etsy.com/transaction/97199845 because I so wanted it when I was watching the tv show. Sirdar kindly gave me the yardage information for the yarn, which is no longer made, and suggested some substitutions. Unfortunately, they’re in wool, which I am allergic to, so I will probably be purchasing a nice acrylic yarn from Lion Brand as a substitute. I bought some acrylic from them to make the Dr Who scarves, and I’m really impressed with the quality. I suppose that, as a sheep nation, NZ just never had the call to get into the manufacture of high quality wool substitutes for crochet and knitting.
I so want to order a couple of these: http://www.etsy.com/listing/112820539/custom-order-deposit – click on the photo montage one.
Apropos of nothing, but I was given a huge zucchini by a colleague, and I was thinking either sweet loaf or muffins. Does anyone have a link to a great recipe. I’m sure chopping up/grating an object such as this is MISANDRY. I will sit on a hard chair and snuggle a penguin while I do it. 🙂
I hated how I was taught Lord of the Flies.
My teacher told us to figure out who was the Jesus character.
Because I was not raised as a Christian, and thus didn’t know the operative qualities of Jesus, I had NO FREAKING CLUE. 10th and 11th grade English class for me was a study in learning what Jesus was like and how to hunt him out of any given book. I didn’t much like this.
Oh wow, I just went through one of the Etsy shops, and she has a pattern for Lamb Chop. I so loved that show as a child, especially Lamb Chop.
I’m a newbie and y’all are alright. =D
Oh god, Lambchop! *squee*
The other day, I sent my lil’ sister a text message saying the following:
Bounce your bottom in your chair
Bounce it here, bounce it there
And with tender, loving care
Bounce it, bounce it everywhere!
Bounce it fast! Bounce it slow!
Bounce it high! Bounce it low!
Sing while you bounce along
One more chorus of this song…
She was aptly amused. =)
I try to read the comment thread because yay lit discussion, but keep looping back to “Hispanics of the 1350s“.
That is going to bug me for days, like a peppercorn stuck in the teeth of my mind. No matter what angle I look at it from, I can’t get it to make any rational sense whatsoever.
@CarleyBlue
Depending on how far you are through the book you will probably end up hating him more as you go along, mostly related to how he treats the women he has sexual relationships with.
Also I studied it in English Literature and as NatFantastic says that is enough to make you hate even the best literature.
There are very few things that I ended up liking more after studying them in class and they are Shakespeare, Chaucer and The Great Gatsby.
wat
I had a teacher once who thought there was only One True Interpretation of Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, but even she never said, every story has Jesus in it.
As long as we’re rolling out which authors we dislike, I’ll say, I really dislike Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea I liked ok (probably because as a budding feminist, I liked that the old man had to suffer so much, natch) but I found it really hard to take the characters seriously in The Sun Also Rises and I just found reading For Whom the Bell Tolls to be excruciating. I know “iceberg theory” is supposed to be a super cool thing and all, but for me, minimalist characters come off as boring. I read fiction because I want to know how other people think and feel. I get enough of being spectator to people’s actions in everyday life.
Also, @Dagrabbit, love the Lamb Chop pattern! If I could knit I would so knit a Lamb Chop. We do however have this toy for our pooches https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTEv13PwkuS5_nhM_6Ql5qSf5Nrwapcvd0kxpvcbjaQhfErRsSCMg
They’re on Lamb Chop III, I believe. I and II suffered a pretty sad doggy toy fate.
The only book I can remember talking about the Jesus character was for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which actually does seem to have a messiah character. The funniest thing that happened was when we were reading Louis Erdrich’s Love Medicine–which I thought was good but didn’t love–which has some sex scenes that left me feeling like I just crawled out of mud. One of which involves butter.
And then the student government decided to raise funds by offering to deliver sticks of butter to people to “butter them up” before you asked them out for the dance… I think we freaked our math teacher out by the syncopated shuddering.
We also read another book that had (strongly implied) brother-sister incest and child molestation, so that was the year of the disgusting literary sex. Oh, and in that book the plot hinges around the mother having an affair with a lower-caste man and for the life of me I cannot remember what that book was. I liked that one a lot, actually, though not as much as Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which I loved.
I strongly disliked The Chocolate War which was a set text one year for English. A book I read because it was recommended to me by a number of people, which I hated, was The Poisonwood Bible. It was an interesting idea, told in a one-dimensional way. I also hated The Bible Code, which again was recommended to me as “I know you don’t like books like this, but you’ll like this one!”. No, I didn’t. I don’t tend to read a lot of fiction any more anyways, natural science books are so much more interesting. However, I do have the steampunk Leviathan sitting on my to-read bookshelf, along with some Robert Rankin.
Katz is a jeebusite so color me shocked that she thinks I’m a “troll”. I find a bit ironic but far more idiotic that futrelle posted a whiny blog entry about some troll claiming to be an atheist saying he’d rather get rid of religion than rape while a jeebusite politician said that rape is just part of Gods plan! Is it any wonder that most feminists, and certainly the smater ones, are atheists? Its the christians and not the atheists making sexist laws that impinge on womens rights. Think about that for a bit y’all ….
Wait, people become atheists because they disagree with the politics of some religious people? I thought people became atheists because they didn’t believe in God/gods/etc.
Go play with your new friend DLColvin, sweetie.
Shut up, FSM. Not sure what your point is, but if you’re trying to imply that Katz is stupid, guess again, troll.
Also, the fact that you called someone a “jeebusite”, implied that smart = atheist, and spewed a bunch of semi-intelligible nonsense is why people think you’re a troll
As an atheist, I’d like to invite FSM to fuck right the fuck off. This “FSM” is sullying the glorious name of the glorious and real FSM, so I hope hir (real) noodly appendages will be used to scatter LEGOs in the faux FSM’s path while zie is without shoes.
I’m always so embarrassed when fellow atheists are asshats.
Now I need to catch up on this thread!
I totally had a Christ-figure high school English teacher, too! We took to starting every discussion of every new book by picking a random character and asking “Is so-and-so the Christ figure?” And then we insisted that the Christ figure in The Old Man and the Sea was the fish. Because it dies.
@FlyingSpaghettiMonster
I’m an atheist and I still think you’re a troll. What now?
@Tam
Maybe it’s a reference to the Battle of Windchelsea, a naval battle where the Spanish suffered heavy losses? At least that’s all that a basic search turns up.
Not gonna lie, I LOL’d.
Oh, hey, Katz, you were asking if I wouldn’t mind looking at something over on the women-in-combat thread. If you haven’t seen my reply, I would love to take a look at it. How d’you want to get it to me?
Thanks, it’s just a wiki and you can find it here.
Oh! Read it! You won’t be disappoint. Ok, you might, I mean, everyone has different tastes, obvs, but I loved Deryn Sharp in those books.