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.
For lovers of weird slang and prison novels involving homemade hot air balloons, I’d like to recommend the book On the Yard by Malcolm Braly. For lovers of stories about octogenarian widows in Florida who get involved with drug kingpins and roommates who enjoy coffee enemas, I recommend Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin.
I realize those are sort of specific genres, but those are two books I read recently and loved.
Sexism is endemic to all of the worlds major religions, especially those that are monotheistic. The bible say that God create Man in his image, and by “man” it specifically means MEN(read male humans). Woman was made in the image of men with a few physical alterations but you get the idea.So if you are a woman and you wanna be with Jesus when you die, you had better be a submissive housewife and mother. But ya don’t have to take my word for it! Read your bible(but only the authorized King James version).
Because… the KJV isn’t the last word on monotheistic scriptures. It’s not the first word.
It’s completely irrelevant to the majority of monotheists in the world.
When you take the other major religions (buddhism in all its flavors, for one) the prime tenet of your “SMRT” Atheism falls apart; because “The Bible” isn’t relevant to but a few of them; and the specific bible you mention to only small slice.
Not only wrong, but stupidly wrong.
Wrong the way down the stack to the last turtle.
Purple Star:
While the Flying Spaghetti Monster certainly is trolling here on manboobz, I’ve noticed that anyone who disagrees with the particular interpretation of feminism(along with overall socio-political paradigm) is conveniently branded a *Troll*.
Really?
While I am not completely sympatico with the way troll is used here, what I see is that bad-faith arguing is the trigger point, not disagreement.
I suspect my variance to usage has more to do with my preferring to think people ignorant, or stupid, more than mendacious. I am often disappointed.
I’d like to follow up about my comments regarding the cheatress with the abusive lover: I was not insinuating that she deserved to be abused. What I was pointing out is that her lover has no respect or empathy for her. Therefore, as long as she satisfies his needs he has no incentive to be concerned with her needs nor to stop treating her so bad. I hope she has finally come to realize that she cannot change him and her only options are to dump him and never fuck him again, or suffer his abuse for the sake of sex.
1: How do you know he had no empathy? How do you know he was, “treating her so bad”? What makes you think abuse is ongoing?
2: Who cares? The post wasn’t about her. It was about douchecanoes who thought ripping into her was justified.
3: It was about how a “safe” community allowed it to happen.
4: You didn’t give a rat’s ass about that, and still seem to think it was about her. It wasn’t, it isn’t and that makes you a douchecanoe.
If he is still abusing her, that factors into things too, as abuse isn’t cut and dried.
Since we don’t know the specifics, going about who should/could do what, and the meaning of what we do know… douchecanoe cubed.
For anyone who liked lots of books which are thought of as, “Classics”, I commend “Silverlock”.
I didn’t like most of what I had to read in my high school lit class (hated Grapes of Wrath), though my other half my english classes were quite good. Gatsby was ok. Catcher in the Rye was terrible. Lord of the flies wasn’t bad. The Jungle, Horrid. Johnny Got His Gun was heavy handed. Hemmingway…. sucks. I think what gets me is the books which are taught to standard, rather than investigated as if they were new.
Teachers who did that made even things I didn’t like interesting. Those which had, “right” answers were only interesting insofar as I could enjoy the prose.
“Therefore, as long as she satisfies his needs he has no incentive to be concerned with her needs nor to stop treating her so bad.”
So, she’s responsible for his behavior? He could, with his on free will, stop being an abuser and tell her the relationship is over. It’s just a thought. Why are you trying to normalize the abuser’s behavior?
Why is it that whenever asswaffles complain about all major religions they always seem to quote the Bible, as if it was somehow a Hindu holy text, or some shit?
They never seem to quote the Bhagadvad Gita, though. Go back to comparative religions, asswaffle!
Oh also pretty much anything by Flannery O’Connor and Zora Neale Hurston.
At least Hemmingway can shorten your pants.
Speaking of religion, Pecunium, you do the various saint days? If so, send some of that Brighid feast my way? Haven’t decided wtf I’m doing yet.
For the rest of you in the northern hemisphere: half way to spring!
Yay Brigid, Ireland’s first abortionist.
http://choiceireland.blogspot.ie/2008/02/happy-st-brigids-day-irelands-first.html?m=1
And yeah, seconding the hatred for basically everything read for class — particularly my 11th grade lit teacher, but all of them really, had a magically ability to make the interesting horrible (Ethan Frome’s pickle dish anyone?)
One exception, I took classical mythology in college, with a prof who’d been teaching over 60 years at that point, and maybe it was that he had a tangent for everything, but he made things I’d read and hated into interesting pieces of history. He did treat everything like it was being examined for the first time, assumed we had no Roman or Greek background, and *gasp* presented the history and whatever tangents he was in the mood for, and asked wtf we thought!
@katz
I read the “pants” in your comment as “penis” and started to wonder how Hemingway would accomplish THAT. o.O
Argenti: No one can do all the saint’s days. But I shall think good thoughts for you.
Some Gal — +1 internet, in the category of “things I did know and am now glad to know”…is that 1 xp point in the knowledge category? Whatever, thank you 🙂
Pecunium — fair enough, but you cook and feast day so I thought you might be cooking for this one 🙂
Thanks though, and maybe direct them at my plants, they’re definitely in need of some blessing! (Seriously, wtf is my cactus’s issue?!)
Argenti: I’m the only catholic in the house (one atheist, one jew). Worse yet, Irish cooking is hard on my partner with the dairy/nightshade issues.
Oh, didn’t even occur to me that zir dietary issues might be relevant! Just kind of figured you’d take any excuse to cook up a feast 🙂
And hmm, think a Scottish lament counts as an um, sacrifice is clearly the wrong word…devotion? To Brighid? My Irish jigs are too summery…
There’s a certain type of Atheist who, having developed a (entirely legitimate) beef with conservative Christianity as expressed in the US/UK, decides the problem must be “religion”, not “those assholes who are religious”. Attempts to point out that their tendency to extrapolate from a particular cultural context to the entire world are ignorant and possibly even racist are dismissed as “NARALT” or pro-religion apologia.
I like the ones, like our noodly pest here, who try to use the vague mention of “women’s rights” to get people on their side, even though they otherwise give no indication of actually giving a shit about women. Indeed, their willingness to use women and our oppression as a tool to get what they want ends up making them look like sexist asshats.
“Attempts to point out that their tendency to extrapolate from a particular cultural context to the entire world are ignorant and possibly even racist are dismissed as “NARALT” or pro-religion apologia.”
It’s at moments like these at I prefer Latin…
Because yes, their attempts at extrapolation often do end up being racist and/or ignorant. My personal “favorite” being how Islam apparently teaches that salt water and fresh water can’t mix and thus Muslims are teaching false science just like creationists. I’ve yet to have anyone prove that this isn’t a strange translation of “should not / must not”, which would make utter sense considering that salt water is Not Drinkable. /aside
Oh lord, that book almost made me throw up. I was so disgusted by the conditions the immigrants were living and working in that I didn’t pay any attention to the language.
Falconer: It wasn’t the subject matter: I knew all that, it was that the pages had more depth than the characters and that Sinclair; after putting Jurgis through 12 kinds of hell makes him happy and then removes him from that happiness as a plot device to show that true happiness will only come from a socialist system.
Which is fine, as a message, but to engage in that kind of cheap, needless, jerking around. Jurgis goes out to the countryside, is on a farm, living the sort of life he led before they left Europe, and gets a “vision” for want of a better word, that he must go back to the city and work for the saving of the world: Sinclair could have had that happen in the city.
It was cheap, and I was pissed off.
Yeah, that’s the thing, I’m totally open to critiques of how religions tend to handle women’s rights (very poorly) from someone who’s clearly interested in women having rights in general. But when someone who doesn’t appear to give a shit about women in general tries to appropriate feminism in service of their grudge against various religious groups? GTFO my movement, asshole, and one your way out the door take a moment to consider how deeply you’re insulting the intelligence of the people whose movement you just attempted to appropriate.
I feel the same way about people whose main critique of Islam (always Arabian Islam only, of course) is how the women are treated, who think feminism is finished in the West because we’re so much better.
@Karalora
Oh, that dragon looks gorgeous!
I am a really slow cross-stitcher, and I also tend to get distracted and leave projects dormant for weeks at a time, so I don’t dare try anything ambitious. (There was the Great Tigger Blanket Debacle of 2011, where I learned this the hard way.) I do a lot of funny sayings and things – I own the Subversive Cross-Stitch book, have you poked around on their website?