So there’s a young woman who attends a “a small liberal arts school.” She majors in Philosophy, and minors in Women’s Studies. And she has a job as an aide for one of her feminist professors.
Her big brother disapproves of her academic choices and the fact that she’s a — wait for it — feminist. And apparently he expresses his disapproval to her at every opportunity. He’s a Men’s Rights Activist, you see, and arguing with his sister is evidently an important form of activism for him. He writes:
I cannot have a discussion with her without it turning into a huge fight. I try to debate, discuss and challenge her to at least entertain ideas that oppose her own – and I get accused of ‘mocking her principles’ and ‘not taking her career choices seriously’ – because apparently I am not allowed to take men’s rights seriously, it could only be a joke with the sole purpose of pissing her off.
So she writes him a note asking him to stop:
‘men’s rights activists’ as I have experienced them not only oppose everything I think, hope for, and fundamentally believe, they hinder the progress of it. They take examples of injustice where men are the victims (of which I will never deny there are plentiful) and they take quotes of some mostly second wave feminists (of which most modern feminists disagree with) and conflate it to fight against feminist agendas. They seem to see that as male oppression.
This seems to me to be a pretty accurate summation of Men’s Rights Activism as I have experienced it too. She continues:
Everything I want to do with my life, my passions, my academic pursuits, my role models, etc. are all put in jeopardy by the ‘men’s rights activism’ I have seen. And when you send me these articles to try to… I don’t know, explain your position, show me why I might be wrong, etc. it hurts me and deeply saddens me because it makes me feel like you’ve never given much thought to my life.
Now, if I were having constant arguments with someone in my family about an issue close to their hearts, and about which we had major disagreements, and this person sent me a note like this, I would, you know, stop arguing with them about it. Because whatever disagreements I had with them would matter less than my relationship with them. And because people who are not assholes generally try to avoid doing things that hurt and sadden those they care about.
I mean, there are limits. If someone in my family became a literal Nazi, I might react differently. But someone in my family majoring in something I think is a dumb thing to major in? Not really any of my fucking business.
So what does MRA Brother do after getting this note?
He goes to the Men’s Rights subreddit to moan about what a terrible ideologue his sister has become, and to get advice on more effective ways to, well, keep doing the things he’s doing that she’s explicitly told him make her feel like shit.
Naturally, the Men’s Rights regulars support him in his quest to be an ongoing asshole to his sister.
One thoughtful fellow going by the name IHaveALargePenis responds directly to the sister’s comment about how her brother’s actions are “hurting and sadden[ing] her,” saying:
Glad we’re making a difference, but what really strikes me is that she can’t deal with being questioned/criticized and this usually applies to a lot of feminists. If their points had merit, then why the fuss? I honestly think it’s because for 50 years or so they were completely unchallenged and were able to get away with insane claims like 1 in 4 women are raped, etc. Now all of a sudden people are asking for sources or stating that yes, women make less, but it’s not due to sexism.
I honestly think you should keep challenging her. She’s been in an echo chamber full of people constantly agreeing with those feminist ideals for far too long and is now convinced everything is true without even questioning it.
Irony alert! Code RED!
Tim8080 is even more blunt:
You may still love her but she almost certainly doesn’t love you anymore. I’ve seen this type of transformation before with one of my friends from highschool. Trust me its only going to get worse.
The creatively named SarcastiCock adds:
Aside from her opinions, she’s completely fucking useless and unemployable. … She’ll be looking for a sugar daddy some day.
JabCross vaguely remembers that some famous philosophers were themselves misogynists:
If she studied Kant at all in Philosophy then she should be shaking her head at the Womyn’s Studies bullshit.
But frankly, a lot of women love to feel like the victim and will subvert their own intelligence to believe it’s true.
MRAMoment suggests that a young woman like the sister in question is unlikely to respond to reason, and suggests that the brother instead try to, well, trick her into seeing the world his way:
I would hazard a guess that she’s currently living in a bubble. She’s on campus, completely enveloped in the ideology without any outside force acting on it. You are her brother, likely her older brother so she views you as some sort of fuddy-duddy who’s opinions don’t matter.
Rather than use reason, expose her bubble to the needles it needs to pop it. Bring her to places where her ideology clashes with reality. If you ever have time to mutually consume entertainment, watch a movie that will bait her into the objectification framing of it and follow up with a counter view of male disposability. Place the debris in the oyster and watch the pearl of doubt grow. Ask her to come volunteering with you at a homeless shelter, and not one specifically aimed at women.
Ironically, it is the generally repugnant OuiCrudites who offers the brother the most straightforward and sensible advice. Oh sure, he declares the sister “a supremacist ideologue demonstrating dangerous levels of solipsism & superiority complex.” But then he adds: “I would just stop talking with her about it.”
Alas, brother makes clear he’s not going to follow this bit of advice.
“I’m more concerned about her dedicating her life to this,” he writes, “than having a peaceful relationship.”
And the mansplainers mansplain on. Because clearly a bunch of random dudes with penis-related usernames on the Men’s Rights subreddit know more about feminism and philosophy than, you know, some dumb chick actually studying those specific subjects and hoping to devote her life to them.
Google fu says SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES!!
Penguins are Tom Martin being funny for once (laughing at, not with, but hey, that’s a start for the man who got “whore” put into the mod filter!). Hard chairs are why he owes his uni £34k.
And we had an appearance of spanx recently, but this will do — http://manboobz.com/2012/06/19/twats-wear-heels-in-order-to-elongate-the-appearance-of-their-legs-and-other-insights-from-mgtowforums-com/comment-page-1/
Now, where’d the matching towel set come from! (Cupcakes are from just about every MRA ever, they seem to think we’re lacing the, with cyanide or something)
Well, it wasn’t the comment I was thinking of, but yep, judgybitch had a towel rant — http://manboobz.com/2012/11/29/save-the-dude-planet-or-paul-elam-yells-at-the-ladies-for-buying-lady-crap/comment-page-1/#comment-224757
Complete with *drum roll* SCENTED MOTHERFUCKING CANDLES!!
It’s one thing to consider your parents to be “fuddy-duddies”, but if your siblings think of you that way I’m going to suggest that they may have a point. Especially if you use words like “fuddy-duddy”.
@Ostra
I swear I just had that exact conflict with an acquaintance of mine on facebook recently, only my attempts to back off of the discussion so that we could be civil with each other were met with anger, attacks and swears from her and her brother. I was “on my soapbox” and “trying to save her” and she was proclaiming to be “old fashioned.” It was so obnoxious. I was expressing my frustration at how she was denouncing feminism because if it wasn’t for feminism she wouldn’t have the freedoms she very clearly enjoys and that, even if she chooses not to fight with us, feminists will always fight for her. I have no problem with her not participating, I just have a problem with her taking feminism for granted and making us out to be the bad guys. She told me I thought I was Rosa Parks. I just… ughh. I felt like her attempt to publicly distance herself from “feminazi types” was an attempt to gain male approval, and it was working, all her male friends were cheering her on. So she gets to enjoy the pats on the head while feminists like myself get attacked for making sure she maintains and expands upon her freedom. Suddenly I was the sexist for assuming her motivations. Yeah, me and her are no longer cool. She said some really horrible things to me and accused me of hating men and being a bad gf, yeah it was ugly. I was so disappointed in her but when I think back she was always pretty cold to me when we’d be at karaoke together. IDK.
As for family, I find it’s best to chip away at smaller instances of ideological disagreements. I have quite a few conservatives in my family who once benefited from welfare and food stamps and just can’t comprehend their current social politics. I’m extra tone-conscious with them because, unlike the people on the internet, I actually care about whether or not I hurt their feelings. Confronting your own bigotry is painful enough without feeling like a family member hates you for it.
@Rabbit
Sorry to hear about your brother being racist. Sadly I don’t have any advice. :/ But have an internet hug if you want it.
@fade
Thank god it wasn’t just me :/ Also, yesterday was a disaster 🙁
@argenti aertheri
ah, so that’s wear the spanx was from. I was having a brain blank 😛
Also, now I feel weird. I guess around my family, when they do say stuff that’s sexist/racist/homophobic, I feel like I have to talk to them about it. I mean, I was having such a hard time feeling like I could actually talk to my dad without my sister there (hehe, sorry) to soak up some of his crap until we talked about it. Luckily, she helped me sit down with him and explain what was going on, most of his ‘isms’ weren’t b/c he was a jerk/ actually believed that stuff, but because he was trying to make jokes, and we had a talk about how they weren’t funny. Um, anyway, my dad’s kind of awesome (at least listening to the explanation and being okay w/ trying to change it). Sadly I’ve got to figure out how to be around his fiance, since they’re moving in in June >:( She’s fun 95% of the time, totally face palm grimace inducing the other 5. gah. rant. yesterday not good.
Being a decent person is necessary for attracting women, but it is certainly not sufficient. And for some women it’s neither.
Actually, bars, clubs, and OKCupid are great ways to meet women. I get sick and tired of people acting like the conventional way(meeting through shared activities/interests)is the
only way to find a significant other. The conventional way certainly never worked for me nor is it how I met my first gf(that was through printed personals). There really is no *one* sure fired way to do it.
And Like I said before: This gals big bro needs to lay the fuck off and keep his “brotherly wisdom” to himself until at the very least she graduates from college. At least she has A JOB instead of being an unemployed student. Let her be a collegian idealist! She need not be pragmatic until she’s finished with school and out in the real world.
Sorry. Random. Someone listed a tumblr at some point on one of these threads and I wanted to follow them, but can’t find it again.
This is weird: I did close those blockquotes!
@ Melody
Historophilia mentioned her tumblr on page one. Just control “f” tumblr there, and I think she either said the name of it or linked to it.
Thank you Fade!
“‘men’s rights activists’ as I have experienced them not only oppose everything I think, hope for, and fundamentally believe, they hinder the progress of it. They take examples of injustice where men are the victims (of which I will never deny there are plentiful) and they take quotes of some mostly second wave feminists (of which most modern feminists disagree with) and conflate it to fight against feminist agendas. They seem to see that as male oppression.”
Best description of the MRM ever.
Yech.
Yeah, alas, I have no real useful shit on family stuff like that. I’ve just pretty much completely cut off all of mine. (I take calls from my grandmother and my younger brother sometimes, but I mostly help my brother off and talk about social niceties only with my grandmother, so good fences make good neighbors and all that.)
Though this actually gives me some valuable input; I’m pretty sure this is how our parents perceived me insisting on coming out of that damned closet with them, as us simply REFUSING to let a bad subject die. (Too bad that bad subject was. You know. Our existence.)
@LBT
Sorry to hear about your family. 🙁 That sounds really sucky. Internet hugs if you want them.
@Rabbit, I’ve had more luck with the slow and steady type of “actually… no” dialogue with family members who say really offensive shit, which I think is sort of akin to what Jessay is saying. My dad used to be horribly horribly racist but he’s gotten loads better in recent years. He’s far from perfect, but I do think our commitment to saying “not cool dad” whenever he’d use the n-word or make a monkey joke helped. If nothing else, I think it helped keep me from internalizing a lot of his racism, which is also important if you have to live with someone spouting that kind of shit. Good luck.
@Jessay ugh, I do not envy you your FB fight. I usually try not to engage in political stuff on Facebook because just UGH, but yeah, I’ve tended to feel for a while that a lot of my sister’s anti-feminist leanings have been in part too because she has always had a lot of male friends and she seems to think being a feminist means hating them or something. She’s also sometimes used “she’s a feminist” as a means of trying to write me off to male acquaintances as a bitchy, humorless, harpy and yeah, it feels like a means of distancing herself from her “feminazi type” sister (me) in order to get dudely head pats. And this is in response to stuff that’s basic like rape jokes. It also pisses me off because ya know, when she told me that something I was doing bothered her, I stopped. It’d be nice if she did the same for me. I finally had to yell at her that if she made one more rape joke around me she could go make friends with some rapists because maybe they’d think her jokes were funny. It’s been two weeks since so I’m hoping maybe she finally took the hint. My family is shouty so even though I tend to think subtle but firm disagreement is best, sometimes people in my family don’t seem to think you’re actually serious unless you shout, which is annoying.
@Purple Toad,
You just contradicted yourself twice and still managed to be wrong, twice. I’d say that has to be a record, but you’re up against some world-class trolls here. In any case, good job, you seem to be somewhat groking that no one is owed an SO or sex just for being “nice”. That of course is no reason to not be a decent human being. Being “nice” to women because you think it means they’ll dispense sex/relationships is treating women like vending machines, which isn’t actually respect.
It’s almost like trolls get, sort of, that women aren’t vending machines, but then feel the need to bemoan the fact that they aren’t. “Yeah, being nice to women doesn’t mean they’ll have sex with you. But god, what bitches they are for not having sex with dudes who are nice to them!”
I am pretty sure no one here has said that there IS any one surefire way to meet someone you’ll hit it off with (unless it’s been a PUA troll). Quite the opposite in fact, I tend to think most people here have said that if one thing isn’t working try loads of different things (not that the regulars here are required to be your dating gurus). I do think though that the “take up a hobby” advice is sound, not necessarily because it’ll help you meet someone (though it might) but because it’ll help you stay busy and not dwell on feelings of loneliness. Plus, it makes you a more interesting person for when you DO meet someone you’d like to chat up or date. Nice is great, but what else have you got to talk about besides your niceness? What do you do that shows that you’re such a nice guy? If the answer to that is “I don’t beat women and I totally could” that’s like a popsicle salesperson’s pitch consisting of “eat our popsicles! They don’t have glass shards in them and we totally could put glass shards in them!” Putting in the absolute minimum effort required to not be a terrible person doesn’t make you a great person or a great potential SO. It makes you barely tolerable, which is about as attractive or romantic as it sounds. In other words, not, really, particularly if you start harboring resentment over all the fucks (proverbial and literal) women don’t give for your “niceness”.
“…..and they take quotes of some mostly second wave feminists (of which most modern feminists disagree with) and conflate it to fight against feminist agendas.”
As a second-wave feminist, can someone illuminate for me exactly what horrific things we said that fueled the MRA movement (if it can be called that)? I’m intrigued because I don’t remember telling women to intentionally get pregnant and then enslave a man to pay for her and her children. I don’t remember anyone saying that, actually.
Actually, bars, clubs, and OKCupid are great ways to meet women.
A qualified yes. Depends on what you mean by, “meet”, and what you expect to get out of it.
If you want sex, it’s great. If what you want it a relationship it’s not bad. But you will have to go out with them, and see what your interests are.
I’ve met women at parties, and at weddings, and in public places where there was no, presumed, common grounds. Some of those worked, most fizzled out.
SamBarge: I think the idea that SecondWave Feminists “hated men” and wanted to engage in separatism. Couple that to the actual increase in equality (and the perceived diminishment of men) and you have a recipe for those who took loss of primacy as subjugation getting pissy; and that’s the MRM in nutshell.
I think it’s specifically a reference to Mary Daly and some of the questionable things she wrote, as well as misinterpretations of Dworkin’s work.
(I often disagree with Dworkin’s stuff, but she didn’t say what sexist dudes think she did.)
pecunium: But she said ‘quotes’ from 2nd wave feminists (that “modern” feminists disagree with) so I’m wondering what exactly that’s about. I mean, this woman is studying feminist theory and history as part of her Women’s Studies degree (I hope) and I was wondering exactly what 2nd wave feminists ever said that could both fuel the current MRAs’ anger and be simultaneously rejected by “modern” feminists (really, not sure what that makes me because I was pretty sure I was a feminist contemporaneous to all the other feminists alive right now, but perhaps I’m “pre-modern”).
Also, I’d disagree that anything outside of Daly’s comments about reducing the male percentage of the population could be considered to be fuelling the MRM. They don’t need any fuel, they’re quite able to generate their own outrage.
SamBarge — there’s a sampling of the MRA favorites in this post — http://manboobz.com/2011/02/15/factchecking-a-list-of-hateful-quotes-from-feminists/
More generally, they like to claim that anything Dworkin or Solanas said represents all modern feminists (ergo the references to zombie Dworkin and zombie Solanas)
Argenti: Thanks for that link. I get that’s what MRAs believe about feminists. But what are they teaching this girl in her liberal arts college if she doesn’t understand the misrepresentations of most of those quotes?
I’m not sure where you got the impression she doesn’t know that the MRM is full of shit. Yeah she says “disagree with” instead of laying out how they’re all misrepresented, but in context it makes perfect sense. Looks like she’s trying to be non-confrontational about telling her brother that he’s hurting her. In any case, “I disagree” is much easier than “you are wrong in each and every case”. Idk how much experience you have with MRAs but it’s like they take lessons in goal post shifting, you’ll be there for a week asking each and every quote because they just want to find one and go GOTCHA.
…anyone have the dancing goalpost gif handy?
Ah… I see where the confusion is… recall that we don’t have her side, only his. The reliability of his narration is suspect.