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.
I am not surprised that a Mel Gibson movie wouldn’t get the highest grade for historical accuracy. I enjoyed watching the movie, but that’s probably because I’m in the US and know very little about the real William Wallace. When I watched it, I had a crush on Mel Gibson, but now that I know what about his racism, sexism, and antisemitism, I no longer find him attractive.
I hated everything I read about it from the get-go. First, for his screaming homophobia directed at Edward II; second, for having Wallace and Isabella of France having an affair (she was TEN when Wallace was executed) and third, for that woad-wearing fuckwittery.
I hated everything I read about it from the get-go. First, for his screaming homophobia directed at Edward II; second, for having Wallace and Isabella of France having an affair (she was TEN when Wallace was executed) and third, for that woad-wearing fuckwittery.
Disney made Pocahontas older, too, so she could be a love interest for John Smith. I guess movies makers don’t want young girl characters. They have to make them into adult women in order to add sex appeal.
Sorry I goofed up my blockquotes.
Ugh, I didn’t know that. Haven’t seen that pic, either. And her all of twelve …
Not that you’d recognise John Smith from his oh-so-handsome Disney version, either.
Woah, I had no idea the real John Smith looked like that. My mental image was the Disney one. Big difference! But I guess regular looking people don’t make the cut for being a Disney prince or princess.
Off topic, but I haven’t been able to find the 20/20 Elam interview yet. If anyone ever finds it, let me know because I think will be fun to watch.
I know – imagine what he’d have looked like if they’d tried to Disney-draw him middle aged and smothered in wiry beard! 😀
In a way, it’d be nice, and not just for the historical accuracy. At least that would show that older people are also very attractive, not just 20 year olds that look like underwear models.
Very good point! Though I’ve just checked, and Smith wasn’t as old as I thought, going from that pic: he was 37.
Be even better if they’d also shown Pocahontas at her age, and not turned it into a romance. Gods know she was young enough when she married, but it wasn’t that young.
Interesting that the whole episode may never have happened, or at least been exaggerated:
“In 1860 Boston businessman and historian Charles Deane was the first scholar to question specific details of Smith’s writings. Smith’s version of events is the only source and skepticism has increasingly been expressed about its veracity. One reason for such doubt is that, despite having published two earlier books about Virginia, Smith’s earliest-surviving account of his rescue by Pocahontas dates from 1616, nearly 10 years later, in a letter entreating Queen Anne to treat Pocahontas with dignity.[16] The time gap in publishing his story raises the possibility that Smith may have exaggerated or invented the event to enhance Pocahontas’s image. However, in a recent book, Professor J. A. Leo Lemay of the University of Delaware points out that Smith’s earlier writing was primarily geographical and ethnographic in nature and did not dwell on his personal experiences; hence there was no reason for him to write down the story until this point.[17]”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_%28explorer%29
The popular media also turned Henry VIII into this, so there you have it.
One of many reasons I didn’t watch that series! Sulky pretty boy in trousers: Henry VIII, not.
Even the so-called documentaries fuck up majorly when they insist on having reenactments.
I…but…he’s…
Wasn’t Henry VIII a red head?!
And speaking of Henrys, the prince apparently yoinked his mic at some event because ICE CREAM TRUCK! I have no primary, or even good secondary, source for this, so apply salt(ed ice cream)
I think the best, “popular” image of Henry VIII is the portrayal in the film version of, “A Man For All Seasons” (which is a splendiforous film and one everybody of wit should watch).
It catches the light hearted boy, whom he was, as he is turning into the jaded man he became.
A baby that young getting excited about an ice cream truck?
They’re bringing him up right. 😀
Yup, Henry VIII’s a redhead, same as his father. It’s why Elizabeth I made such a thing of her red hair.
I saw Man for All Seasons when I was at high school, on telly. Can’t remember much except the scene when Henry arrives at More’s place, jumps off the barge and lands in the mud. He’s standing there staring at his wrecked shoes and everyone else has gone Really Quiet. Then he laughs, and of course all the courtiers laugh and jump in the mud too.
Oh, and the title music. I can still hear that.
My favourite rendition of Henry, seen when I was younger still, was Keith Michell’s in The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Far from accurate, some of those plays, but I’ve still a soft spot for them. Fell totally for Anne Boleyn after seeing Dorothy Tutin play her, and I still can’t get over how like Archbishop Cranmer Bernard Hepton looked. Mum once looked at the most famous portrait of Cranmer and thought it was Hepton.
Also, for anyone who’s only seen renditions of Catherine of Aragon as an older woman: this is a portrait of her when she was young.
No, the wee one’s uncle!
Er, Harry. A mistake I perpetually make (and this is how you know I’m American!)
Oh, the current red-headed Prince Hal! 😀
Cry Harry for God, England and
St Georgeice cream!A Man for All Seasons is lovely, although even without any particularly large interest in English history, I suspect it’s biased rather strongly.
Actually I stuffed up much more – the baby’s George Alexander Louis.
::collapes in confusion::
😀
katz – yes, iirc (not to be taken for granted today! 😛 ) it is.
Hah! Along with the “going to school on a kangaroo’s back” and the drop bear stories, I remember my girls laughing themselves sick over their US friends asking whether we had banks in Australia. There was also some confusion over whether Australian girls got periods like American girls do. I realise these kids were only middle school, but how strange do they really think the world is beyond their borders?
The thing about A Man For All Seasons is that it’s bias isn’t all in all, that strong. The core story is fairly faithful and the aspects of the stage show which were biased, were lost in the transition to film.
Henry, for reasons of State, treated More badly, and More knew for what it was he was giving himself up to martyrdom. That the reasons he did it translate so well to the modern mind are more artefacts of the present than they are “ultimate truths”, but they resonate.
Oh lord yes, kangaroos. First time in London, some young USian bloke on the Tube asks if I know good places to hang out. I told him no, I’m a tourist too. Then he wanted to know if I see kangaroos around. “In the zoo,” I told him.
mildlymagnificent – that one about the periods makes me roll my eyes so hard. It reminds me of a bit in Ghost Story that’s is pretty much Turn of the Screw meets Deliverance, set in the 1920s/30s. There’s a kid in it who’s been told, and firmly believes, that there isn’t anything else except the US; there’s no place where people don’t speak American, and that the world only extends a few miles out of the hamlet where he lives. Granted the character is – what’s the preferred term now, developmentally delayed? – but every time I hear stories like yours, I’m reminded of this.