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.
Basement cat disapproves of such bright blankets.
Our kitty is trying to guess Doad’s password and messing with the accessibility settings. He’s going to be annoyed when he comes back and has to figure out how to turn off audio assistance.
Lol, hope it’s a mac! I’d be confounded by that in windows!
Oh, I forgot earlier because the socktroll was distracting me – my favorite voice (that’s current, anyway). Another one who’s so goth he shits bats.
And here he is again, with some of the guys from KMFDM.
I see your goth posts and raise you Joy Division. This is my favourate song of theirs:
Chris Cornell also has a great voice, but he’s not exactly prolific these days.
@Cassandra in that last video you posted, he reminds me of Iggy Pop.
You have no idea how happy it made me to be able to interview one of the Joy Division guys and have it go brilliantly.
This one is my favorite.
But this is the one that made me happiest to hear live.
@ Kiwi girl
A friend of mine who’s from Hokkaido calls him “our David Bowie”. That description feels about right to me.
I’m so jealous about the interview, and happy to hear it went well. I met The Stranglers at a music store in Palmerston North in…1995? when they did a small show there for music store clients. They also played Mountain Rock and I went to that too and saw them there. They, plus Mental as Anything, were the only reasons I wanted to go.
But hmm.. Bowie, I realise he and Iggy Pop were (are?) close, so I would assume that they would share some stage mannerisms, but I still get more of an Iggy Pop vibe. I saw Iggy Pop live once, he opened for Jimmy Barnes. One of my more punk friends was appalled at that. To this day, I cannot recall why I went to a Jimmy Barnes concert as I never really liked Cold Chisel either.
More random tie-ins! The guitar player of the old Finnish band I posted earlier was Iggy Pop’s touring guitarist for a while, before his drug habit fucked it up for him.
Maybe this will make the David Bowie reference make more sense. His band started out as 100% New Wave, got more rock and more goth as time went on.
Or, solo.
Maybe I just find it hard to picture Iggy without the tendency to self-mutilate.
Totally OT and vital update: I had a proper all-round look trying on the new tunic. It’s shorter at the back than the front, = only an inch or two below the bum, which in turn = not being worn with leggings! 😀 But I’ve a tie-dye sort of long brown skirt that goes very well with it.
/news update
Congrats on working out what to wear with your new tunic!
Merci!
On that note, I’d better head to bed. Work tomorrow and I never can get more than about five-six hours’ sleep on a Sunday night. Niters, all! 🙂
I know I’m late, but I love English Beat. They came out with a box set last year.
I also love ELO, Joy Division and New Order. “Ceremony” totally makes my top 20 singles list.
drst: Have you heard Heart’s performance of “Stairway” from the recent Kennedy Center Honors? Ann Wilson is so amazing, she made Robert Plant (who lives somewhere in my neighborhood, but I have not spotted him yet) tear up. Fun fact: Heart was my very first concert at 8 years old, because my parents couldn’t find a sitter.
Random music observation: I’ve been hearing a lot of April Wine in movies/tv shows, specifically “Roller” which is a great song, and a nice change from that drippy “Just Between You and Me” that Classic Rock radio seems to like so much, blarg.
Wow… fathertime was so dull I passed out trying to get to the interesting parts of the thread.
We went and saw Les Mis after I got done at work. It was quite well done, IMO.
Argenti: I can, actually, get mostly decent jack, but TJ’s here is a bit harder to get to, and none of my local shops has it. So I am forced to eat other cheeses (though I have found a muenster which is inedible. Tough, bland and salty as all fuck. It won’t melt and it has the texture of stringy rubber).
Pecunium: Murray’s doesn’t have jack? They seem to have everything else.
“Wow… fathertime was so dull I passed out trying to get to the interesting parts of the thread.”
If there was booze involved, it was a night better spent that way!
And I’m glad you can get your cheese, it’d be hilarious if my first trip to NYC involved delivering cheese (I need to email you on that actually, somehow my schedule got complicated)
OOh… guys, you won. fathertime didn’t stop reading, but at 3:23 this morning he took the same, (worn out, stupid, and indefensible) argument he was making here, and sent them to me as a pretense at reply to my comment at 2:26
So for a couple of hours he was hitting refresh, and when I showed up he couldn’t resist the attempt to get in the last word, but he was apparently, afraid to make it here.
So you outlasted him.
And no dude, sending it to me as a system message to one of my blogs doesn’t change the inanity of your contention that since you insist there were some MRAs who weren’t asshats they must be the majority. If they were the majority you wouldn’t need to bob and weave with this nonsense about you can’t remember. I don’t recall the name of all the people I’ve ripped the shit out of for torture apologia [in fact I can only think of one specifically, but I knew Karl Lembke in meatspace; and he has made a small fetish out of trying to paint me a fool and a hypocrite on the subject].
But in 10 years (roughly) of doing internet battle on the subject you may be sure I’ve seen lots of torture apologists. I have a memory. There is google. I can track down some if I need to.
You… can’t. That tells me you are lying through your teeth. Publicly, and privately. So take your harassing ass and stuff it. I’ve banned you from that blog, not because you are “too much to handle”, but because if you want to have this discussion, you get to have it where you started it.
hellkell If they have jack, I’ve not noticed it in the overwhelming piles of other stuff. WF has aged jack, and might have other jacks in the non-cheese section of cheeses, but I don’t look there when I go in.
Since I can’t cook with it, I don’t miss it, all that often.
“…but because if you want to have this discussion, you get to have it where you started it.”
Is that a fallacy or just common curtesy? Seeing how that’s twice in a week, I’d rather enjoy having a clear cut “you are wrong and should feel bad” citation.
In OT things, near as I can tell my father failed to trap or kill anything, hopefully he’ll forget he was trying to and not reset the traps (either that or get himself good and end up in the ER, that’d also work)
And gods, it has been about ten years now huh? I wanted to be wrong…by my guess ten years ago, we’ve got another 5-10+ years to our little mess in the Middle East. They’ll have another decade+ of the aftermath, and then we’ll do it all over again, because we didn’t learn when we armed Afghanistan against Russia (rather the USSR) and we haven’t learned now…
Such idiocy…Pecunium, compared to the current batch of fools, and the potential replacement fools, I’d totally vote for you. Particularly for the slap the military into shape roles that we don’t get to vote on >.<
Argenti: It’s neither. It’s a tactic*. The idea is to “move it to e-mail”, or some other means, and isolate the opponent (for by that point it’s pretty clear the one party has a personal stake in it). That keeps the one person from having more than one person addressing the issues, and makes the other less possessed of support from others.
When it’s unsolicited (as “stam” and father_time89) did, it’s abusice. It’s a combination of an attempt to harass, and to isolate, and (often) meant to imply you can’t get away from them.
It’s cowardly.
*not always, if a subject is OT, can be polarising/huge, it’s not wrong to ask to remove it so as to keep the rest of a group from being forced to take part. Context matters.
As to torture. I’ve actually been talking about it for about 20 years (since I became an interrogator), but prior to ’03/’04 it wasn’t much, and explaining why it’s not a good thing (nor useful) was about all I had to do when it came up.
Then things changed.
Re: emailing: yeah the whether you have any interest in hearing from them is relevant (I attempt to type while my iPad alerts of an email from you 🙂 ) Context, it matters!
That little bit of irony just got a much needed chuckle out of me, thanks for that.
But yes, attempting to take the conversation elsewhere, as a tactic to gain the upper hand or isolate the discussion or generally just be an abusive ass, is an underhand tactic. I was hoping that was official in some sense or another, since one persons definition of not wanted communication…well, this is why harassment laws require the harasser to have been told the communication is not wanted
“Then things changed.” Despite that being how life goes, in all senses of the word life, that one…and the “it must’ve been necessary” backlash…in a war we were (are) ostensibly involved in over terrorism and human rights…I don’t…
That’s still hitting me as a combination of rage, horror, and shame, how anyone could claim that opposing torture is unpatriotic…dandy, someone get me my commie reds then.