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.
You can’t beat good ole martin’s concern for all those abandoned and dieing males. If he’s talking real abandonment/ death he has the wrong gender, but I suspect he’s talking first world male abandonment. (Like no dates sob sob).
I’m pretty sure Average Man is a parody account from a few of their tweets. It is hard to tell with many of the seemingly sincere pro-masculism accounts, though: Poe’s Law in action.
i love when men mock masculinity! we’re so close to eliminating it!! pretty soon, we’re all going to be females!! so glad all these men are doing the dirty work and eliminating themselves off the planet 🙂
The sad thing is that the world could really use a sincere masculist movement. But in order to be sincere, it would have to work arm in arm with feminism, and the very thought causes MRAs to become incoherent with rage.
I’m afraid Jay Satellite’s tweet is literally true of a lot of MRAs.
“i love when men mock masculinity! we’re so close to eliminating it!! pretty soon, we’re all going to be females!! so glad all these men are doing the dirty work and eliminating themselves off the planet ”
That IS a great parody!
I read this to my roommate and we can’t stop laughing. He means discussing only one, right? Unless he thinks society is “disgusting on” all of men and he is therefore entitled to be disgusting to women?
I’m competing in parliamentary debate next weekend. I’m going to end all my points with “and that’s real” so everyone knows how true my words are.
Men go 4 bear? I wonder where Warrior for Justice lives.
Augochlorrela, “and that’s real” means you win all debates on the inter webs.;-)
I would think you would want at least 7 or 8 people with you when going 4 bear.
Ooooh, we have a new catch phrase thanks to augochlorella, and that’s real.
The MRA tweets are what privilege looks like when it gets rattled.
and that’s real.
Misandry led to the crucifixion, I iz ded of stupid. Rome was only involved by hating men, right Caesar?
Tulgey, some of Average Man’s tweets are jokes that are meant to parody feminist jokes about the hashtag — some of them have /s tags at the end of them. He seems to be a sincere MRA, as far as I can tell.
“bro,” if men are being killed off in wars, it’s not women that are sending them there. If war isn’t what you’re referring to, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Women are always doing their nails and gossiping while 5 men go 4 bear, and that’s real.
And box is sure civilisation will crash and burn because people with vaginas can vote – and that’s real too.
Whoops that should be vox of course.
I saw a few of Average Man’s earlier tweets, like the one about it being illegal for men to abdicate parental responsibility, which convinced me it was a Poe, but looking at their later tweets just now convinces me they’re for real. That’s way too much playing it with a straight face.
Anyway, any men 4 gather II go 4 bear? We go 4 bear l8r. Men r doers.
and that’s real.
Looks like some tweets have gone to #INeedMasculism instead. There are some good ones in there though.
Reblogged this on EllenBeth Wachs and commented:
The tweets were flying so fast it was hard to keep up with this hashtag. It was my evening entertainment.
All of you using “and that’s real” has made my night, and that’s real.
I’m trying to work out what ‘misplaced bum syndrome’ is, so far I got a serious and tragic condition where the gluteus maximus detaches itself and is left at the bus stop and other such locations.