So: many if not most of you have probably heard about the whole #INeedMasculismBecause thing. For those who aren’t: a bunch of Men’s Rights Redditors and other MRAs, inspired by a post on 4Chan, decided to swarm Twitter with #INeedMasculismBecause tweets in response to the #INeedFeminismBecause hashtag. Feminists responded by outswarming the MRAs, flooding their new hashtag with often quite hilarious parodies of MRAspeak, as well as some just plain ridiculousness.
Today, on r/mensrights, MRAs are surveying the damage in a host of different threads, with some plaintively wondering “why is everyone so hostile towards the idea of men having issues,” and others claiming that the hashtag really “started as a caricature of Men’s Rights, in order to lure out the real life caricatures of Radical Feminism.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Jezebel has already chronicled some of the funniest parody tweets. And I was thinking of doing the same. I mean, these are pretty good:
Ok, that last one was just a dumb joke about someone ordering a watermelon-flavored drink. I “favorite” a lot of things.
Anyway, catching up on the whole thing last night, I found myself thinking that the parody comments – as funny as some of them were – couldn’t really compete with the loopiness of the real MRA tweets.
So here are some #INeedMasculismBecause tweets by some of my new favorite Twitter MRAs. (I only started going through these really late last night, so a lot of my examples come from the Indian MRAs who were posting prolifically at the time.)
Let’s start with Average Man, who opened a new Twitter account just for the occasion:
Uh, maybe they gave you “less marks” because you don’t know the difference between “less” and “lower.”
Alexander shared these somewhat perplexing thoughts:
The prolific SaveIndianFamilyNGO had all sorts of interesting opinions:
I found myself often perplexed by wnnbl, but I don’t think his troubles with English were the main problem:
I assume these last two are jokes, but honestly, who knows?
I have no idea what Virag was going on about with these tweets:
But this one at least was pretty clear:
Atit seems to have a rather strange idea of what “equality for men” means:
Warrior for Justice also doesn’t seem to like women very much:
Martin Clausen ramped up his largely dormant Twitter account to post these gems:
I don’t quite know what to make of Jackson here, but he seems to be a real MRA.
This is just a theory, but maybe women look at you strangely when you pick up your kids because of that uncontrollable boner you mentioned earlier?
MRAs show once again that they’re beyond parody — or at least indistinguishable from it.
Except, of course, when they’re assuming everyone is exactly like them. Like the kids at my school who asked our English teacher from England when they celebrated Thanksgiving over there (he told them it was on July 4th, but they didn’t get it…)
::headdesk::
I think the US educational system should spend more time teaching about other countries because these stories are just sad. I’m just cringing to think about USians asking Australians if they see kangaroos all the time, or quoting Braveheart lines in Scotland.
Well, our lot can be embarrassingly ignorant, too, not that that’s much comfort.
But there’s a different flavour to it. I remember a lot of the kids I had as tuition students in 2001, really, truly, honestly did not know that New York wasn’t part of Australia. They needed a lot of reassurance that Australia wasn’t being attacked.
They see so much US stuff on television, they completely miss out on their sense of “place in the world” if they’ve not been taught explicitly along the old-fashioned lines we were taught (back in dinosaur time, the 50s, the geography teaching was explicitly local area and city streets first, state and relationship to rest of Australia following year/s, more international stuff after that). Though of course back then we also had to know the names of practically every river and major city in the UK, including Scotland. Which still gives me problems – I have real trouble with the idea that most of those famous cities are much, much smaller than the one I live in.
It’s sort of a mirror image, isn’t it – some USians seem to think they’re the whole world (though the next question then is, who the heck do they think they’re fighting?) while some of our lot think we’re the 51st state (or would, if they knew anything about US states).
Geography had pretty much died on its arse by the time I was in high school in the 70s. We learned nothing about countries, or actual physical geography. It was like a bad attempt to combine geology with social studies. I could tell what continent countries are in and know famous cities and the like, but actually finding them on a map? Not likely. What knowledge of places I have comes from my interest in UK and French history, and that certainly doesn’t come from knowledge imparted at school, either.
Speaking of city sizes, it was mind-boggling to read recently that greater Melbourne covers a bigger area than greater London. Nothing like the population, but fuuuuuuuck that’s a huge area. 75% of Victoria’s population lives in Melbourne now – and the gummint keeps telling people to go and live in the regional towns! Yeah, right, when there are lotsa jobs, hospitals, schools, public transport, all that sort of thing your mate Kennett closed down during the 1990s …
Are you feeling as pissed off with this election as I am? Have you seen PZ’s thread on it?
Pissed off beyond all recognition. I’m feeling almost as bad as I did when Kim Beasley leapt his considerable bulk onto Howard’s “children overboard” bandwagon 12 years ago. I felt as though the party lost its moral compass then and hasn’t regained it since. It’s certainly more competent as government than the libs, but it’s really the lesser of two evils now.
I kept on voting as before but my heart wasn’t in it. I suspect that there are a hell of a lot of previously rusted on labor voters like me, who do their dreary duty on election day but won’t join/ renew their memberships of the party or help out with leaflets or how to vote cards. Though I think the magnificent mr might have done a couple of stints scrutineering after 2001 (our very nice next door neighbour was a party official who could get favours out of a rock), but not recently.
Yeah, I feel much the same. Never been a Labor party member but rusted-on Labor voter pretty much covers it, except for once or twice where I was so disgusted with the parties I drew a box on the sheet and voted for Louis instead.
I nearly gagged this morning when I saw a Rise Up Australia spruiker near home. Just what we need, Danny Nalliah’s racist homophobic misogynistic scumbag party standing in my electorate. Bad enough having Clive Palmer’s suckers wandering around.
Comments like this make me feel as though for all the ways we’re different, I’d feel right at home over there with you guys.
*sigh*
Mumble grumble lesser of two weevils is still a weevil…
Howard – like someone on the Pharyngula thread said, it’s just like the US: both parties suck!
Oh man, I WISH geography here would’ve covered local shit. As it was, I got some maps and learned around the time we became a pizza delivery driver, but still! And Texas is so enormous, it probably would’ve been an ass.
Never thought I’d be thankful for the opportunity to travel when young; it helped us get a better sense of how gloriously large the world is–and how different. If folks don’t have internet, and live in a remote town or have shitty situations, I can’t really blame them for being unable to look too far outside their own homes. What’s the point of knowing about France when you’re struggling to just feed yourself? Sure, it’s really easy to shake heads and sigh about the poorly educated kids who don’t know Connecticut from Scotland… but if you’re some poor kid with no money in Utah, how much difference is it really going to make in your life?
I dunno. I guess I’d just rather have people ask the stupid questions so they can get answered and learn, rather than have them never mention it at all and keep their ignorance.
That said, I got asked whether I rode a horse to school by other folks from the US.
Poor and lacking education – and having more pressing concerns – is one thing, but the ignorance I’ve encountered came from people who didn’t fit that category at all. They’d had what would be considered reasonably good educations and certainly weren’t poor or cut off from the world. Hell, half of them were the stereotypical USian tourists. “Was that the seventeenth century AD or BC” re: the building of Versailles, for instance (this was asked IN FRANCE, so these were people who could afford to travel).
Yeah, I wasn’t in some small town either, it was near cape canaveral. Launch men to the moon around the corner, don’t know what states are in your country. (I got to see a shuttle land, and an armadillo…the latter was more impressive as I was too short to actually see the shuttle)
Fun trip, February, so covered in snow here, 80~ there. Did not enjoy having to leave!
Part of my annoyance is surely that I’d have gone to the state geography bee if not for the damned yellow river (I crossed the Chinese names and argh, blew it) — spelling bees, out on the first word, geography? Bring it on. (Well, mostly, I suck at the balkin states)
“(I got to see a shuttle land, and an armadillo…”
“Hello Houston, the armadillo has landed!”
The armadillo has survived impact, protected by it’s shell. The armadillo is unrolling and preparing to meet the press, please stand by for further updates.
And mission commander Pierre McKenzie has descended the steps and removed his helmet … “I CLAIM THIS TERRITORY FOR CANADA!”
What’s this? Is Poutine batting at the armadillo?! I don’t think the cat stands a chance in this one.
But she has POUTINE POWER and psychic wild Romanian dogs to help. Never underestimate Canadian kittehs.
It is really creepy how many trolls seem to fixate on CassandraSays.
Thereby hangs a tale. Probably one full of shenanigans properly termed “zany.”
Is it wrong I read that in the voice of the Gauntlet narrator? Avoid dangerous objects. Omit needless words. Blue troll needs flames badly!
Someone complained to me yesterday that someone else had their head “so far up their ass they need windshield wipers.”
I sat there, kind of stunned, for a minute.