Some words of wisdom from TheRedPill subreddit, a lovely little subdivision of Reddit devoted to a sort of mishmash of Men’s Rights and Pickup Artistry. It’s at least as ridiculous as the sum of its parts.
And I can prove that with actual numbers. Well, a single number: 95. That’s the number of net upvotes the comment I took the following quotes from had gotten from the assembled Red Pillers (at least when I last looked at it). Let’s listen in as Whisper enlightens us on a variety of topics:
World History:
[M]en have never had an easy ride unless they were one of the aristocracy. We’ve always been the labouring sex, the risk-taking sex, the disposable sex.
Little known fact: Poor women throughout history have never had to work or suffer at all, having been issued comfy pillows and a lifetime supply of bon-bons at birth from the Invisible Matriarchy.
The Squeaky Vagina Gets the Grease:
[W]hen something unfair happens to a woman, her usual response to point this unfairness out to whoever appears to have power. But men, being less submissive, tend to blame ourselves, ask “What am I doing wrong?”, and try to change either our behaviour or our environment (by going elsewhere).
All that complaining you think you hear from Men’s Rights Activists? Not really complaining. It’s just them wondering what they’ve been doing wrong. Apparently they’re talking in a strange sort of code. When they refer to “feminists” and “bitches” and “sluts” behaving horribly and deserving blame for everything, they are in fact referring to themselves.
On Stabbing:
[W]hen a man sees someone doing better than him, his first impulse is not to stab, but to try to learn.
Good to know! It is generally considered impolite to stab unless someone else attempts to stab you first.
On Advice, Christmas Giving and Bananas in Ears:
[W]omen were certainly willing to give us advice. Oh, boy, were they ever willing to give us advice. Page after page, speech after speech, of what we should and shouldn’t do, who we should and shouldn’t be …
And, of course, when we followed this advice, things got worse.
And gradually we came to realize that when we asked these “new women”, empowered by feminism, what a man should do, they didn’t hear “What should a man’s life be like?”, they heard “What do you want for christmas?”.
This last bit seems a little puzzling. Are you sure these women you’ve been speaking to didn’t have bananas in their ears?
On Daddies, Ponies and Maternity Leave:
We woke up to the fact that women’s lists of what a man should do were the equivalent of a 12 year old girl asking daddy for a pony. She doesn’t worry about whether daddy can actually afford to buy her one …
Every feminist lobbying for paid maternity leave is a submissive asking daddy to care for her. Every “men can stop rape” poster is a woman admitting she cannot protect herself. Every woman complaining that we shouldn’t portray women like that in video games is a woman saying “I can’t make my own video games, please consider my wishes when you make them for both of us”. ….
Feminism was never about female independence. If it were, it would not require men to cooperate or even notice. They wouldn’t need us to give them jobs if they started their own businesses. They wouldn’t need us to give them “equal pay” if they were doing the hiring. They wouldn’t need laws mandating maternity leave and free birth control if they were the ones setting, and paying, employee benefits. They wouldn’t need “no means no” if they were the ones making the sexual advances. They wouldn’t need “men can stop rape” if they took responsibility for defending themselves from psychos.
So all we have to do is stop. Say no. You can have a slightly bigger allowance, but you cannot have a pony.
Did you hear that, ladies? Wanting equal pay, or maternity leave, or simply not to be raped – all those things are exactly like throwing a tantrum for a pony.
Also, apparently only men pay taxes, or work in the video game industry, or really anywhere at all. And no one deserves police protection because that means they’re some sort of wuss.
Who knew?
Thanks, TheRedPill subreddit!
EDITED TO ADD: I just noticed that Deansdale’s Blog, a Manospherian blog that’s previously defended some of the less savory utterances of assorted MRA and PUA celebrities, has reposted Whisper’s comment in its entirety under the headline “A gold nugget from Reddit,” with no sarcasm intended. I’ll agree that it’s some sort of nugget, but it’s neither gold nor chicken. And again, for those critics who think I mae a big deal of comments, well, this is a comment that MRAs and Manospherians are making a big deal of themselves.
Does this knuckle-dragging mouthbreather even read his own post? On several of his points, he’s spot-on, and it’s on those points that feminism has been working. They want women to be able to start their own businesses with as much societal support for doing so as men get. Feminism is all about putting women in positions where they can set and pay for employee benefits.
Of course, he’s a complete idiot when it comes to the subject of rape, but hey, MRAs, goes with the territory.
It’s so funny, but the other day I read an article by a middle-aged female journalist who had just realized that even seemingly nice and decent men can be pretty sexist – she just didn’t want to admit to herself earlier that things nowadays aren’t completely hunky-dory on the gender front – and she described her feminist awakening as “it was like I suddenly took the red pill, like Nemo does in the Matrix, and came to see the world as it’s really like”.
Obviously she’d never been på Manboobz, but pretty funny that she’d choose THAT metaphor… 😀
>>>They want women to be able to start their own businesses with as much societal support for doing so as men get.
Here’s your problem. You still think there’s such a thing as “society”, whereas our MRA friends understand that we’re all atomized individuals and that a man’s business success comes entirely 100% from his own heroic struggle against adversity, and nobody ever helped out by, say, providing roads, infrastructures and such. Nope, it’s all from one man’s brow sweat. And the fact women are not doing it just shows that they’re inferior beings, because there doesn’t exist such a thing as society to keep them down.
“Feminism was never about female independence.”
Well, as a matter of fact, it was, and still is. Consult a book.
“If it were, it would not require men to cooperate or even notice.”
Uh, those with systemic power will always notice when another demo wants the same things they want — hence backlash.
“They wouldn’t need us to give them jobs if they started their own businesses.”
Do all men own their own businesses? Does the guy who wrote this OP in a position to give someone a job? Otherwise, he shouldn’t say “us.” These guys like to appropriate the achievements of others, don’t they? Is there any reason any employer should NEVER hire a woman…I mean, wait, oh, sexism.
“They wouldn’t need us to give them “equal pay” if they were doing the hiring.”
Uh, everyone should be paid “equally,” not based on their gender. Also, he’s saying women should only be expected to be paid fairly if the employer is a woman. So, all male bosses low ball their female employees?
“They wouldn’t need laws mandating maternity leave and free birth control if they were the ones setting, and paying, employee benefits….”
Well, at least he’s admitting women are treated unfairly…I guess.
“They wouldn’t need “no means no” if they were the ones making the sexual advances. They wouldn’t need “men can stop rape” if they took responsibility for defending themselves from psychos.”
What? I mean, what? If we made the sexual advances all the time, there would be no rape? Rapists have a problem, they rape. Lack of sex doesn’t make a rapist. Just go ask all the people who never raped anyone before. And this guy’s profound inability to take responsibility for anything is deep. Dude’s shouldn’t have to go through the trouble of listening to someone who say’s no?
And the last part, hmm. It sounds like he’s all for women taking up vigilantism. OK, cool. We’ll all become Batwoman, because that makes more sense then telling men “Rape is bad.”
I wonder, if he were attacked, mugged and severely beaten, how he would feel if the cops asked him what he was wearing, and told, “Well you shouldn’t have gone out at night.” What if someone suggested he deserved to be assaulted because he couldn’t beat up his attacker?
Men get to say no too lego stepper and you should stop ignoring that.
Or just GO AWAY. Over a field of cactus legos.
So submissiveness = petitioning for redress of wrongs.
Not-submissiveness = avoiding confrontation.
Pfffh, weak.
Carbon life forms wouldn’t need to rely on carbon if they just made their own material.
You wouldn’t need to breathe oxygen if you could just assemble and secrete your own energy enabler, why are you parasiting on the trees man?
Damn birds wouldn’t need air if they could generate anti gravity fields on their own! They’re using the physical universe for a free ride!
No one needs buildings to get out of the rain if they just dodged every single rain drop, your need for buildings is WEAK!
Food? Come on, why do you eat? If you just approximated cold fusion within your own core you wouldn’t need to leech of the energy of the sun!
Skeletal structure? If you could really stand on your own you wouldn’t NEED a skeletal structure!
Bones are misandry!
Black holes are in deep space are singularity null points and they wouldn’t need to suck up all that light if they just made their own! Why are they getting a free buffet from the hard work of galaxy collisions and entropy?!
Those fucking planets, man, always generating warps in the space-time continum. They wouldn’t need to if they could just enable their own hyperspace bypass procedures! They’re leeches, each and every single one.
Astronomy was never about figuring out the knowledge of the extraplanar and extrasolar bodies, it was just about leeching off the universe. Hah!
DAmn feminists! They wouldn’t need knowledge if they just made every single claim based on a reality of their own making! They wouldn’t need the outside world if they just set up camp firmly inside Plato’s Cave and lived in their own heads!
I wonder how this dude feels about POC, immigrant labour exploitation (or hell, immigration and refugees in general), the use of sweatshops… so many topics that I would love to pick his brain as a substitute for ipecac
He’s on to me. The real reason I am a feminist is because I want a new clothesline and some Tupperware next Christmas.
Sometimes men take paternity leave for a new baby, or family leave for a sick or elderly relative. I guess they don’t count.
And the only problems with maternity leave is that it’s way too short and it doesn’t have to be paid time off, at least here in the US. It is hard to recuperate from childbirth. I know it took me more than six weeks to bounce back, and my deliveries were uncomplicated vaginal births. People who get C-sections need even more time, because they are getting over not only birth, but also a major surgery.
Dvärghundspossen: The webcomic Sinfest has pretty much chosen to describe awakening to feminism with the Matrix metaphor, too. I’m not one-hundred percent certain about this, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the author actually has experienced this sort of thing over the course of his strip–moving from a philosophy dudebro who believed in the gender dichotomy and failed to understand that it’s a bogus bit of bullshit, to someone who actually gets it, and is trying to get better. This has caused the overall plotline to take some sharp turns, as the storyline gets more nuanced. (As far as I’m concerned, Monique is probably best regarded as the ‘main character’ of the strip, with Slick and the rest of the cast being slowly influenced by the ripple effects of her transformation.)
Jesus, there’s so much this guy doesn’t get. His ass must be sore after having all those “facts” yanked out of it.
He’s on to me. The real reason I am a feminist is because I want a new clothesline and some Tupperware next Christmas.
Do they even make Tupperware anymore? Personally, I’m with my boyfriend because if he dies I get his sweet desktop. Duh. Modern feminism.
Every feminist lobbying for paid maternity leave is a submissive asking daddy to care for her
Weirdly, when I’ve wanted something from my dad I’ve asked my dad. When I’ve wanted something from my employer, I’ve asked my employer. Are all MRAs employed by their own parents? It would explain a lot about their worldview.
Clearly this turd thinks women shouldn’t be working, or if they do, not have the temerity to get pregnant.
Fuck this guy.
Also, I don’t think domination/submission works like MRAs think it works…
No kidding. If he wants to say that the life for a male serf in the middle ages was hard, I’d agree with him. However, he also needs to understand that it was even worse for women and children. Maybe he needs to read “Piers Ploughman”, written in the 1300’s about life for farm women.
This was written sometime around the 1360’s in Europe. Now if things were that hard then, it would have been much worse in 1317, when a famine killed 8 million people, or 1348, when the plague killed 100 million people.
So if he gets to take credit for all the work done by men in the middle ages, then I can take credit for spending all day preserving food, threshing wheat, or spinning thread, even though the only time I’ve seen a spinning wheel is when I watched Disney’s Sleeping Beauty
[W]hen a man sees someone doing better than him, his first impulse is not to stab, but to try to learn.
In all fairness, you would not believe the number of people I stabbed in grad school.
@Bagelsan, yeah, they still make Tupperware, and they still have parties. Last year, I was
suckeredtalked into going to a party of a friend. Everything was really expensive, but I wanted to be polite, so I bought a stirring pitcher.What bull. That is all.
You know what’s really funny? If (and when) women were to start doing the sort of things this guy suggests, the MRAs would be in an outrage.
“They wouldn’t need us to give them “equal pay” if they were doing the hiring.”
A woman-owned business hiring women! Obviously discriminating against much more talented men! (talented on account of the fact that they’re men, of course).
” They wouldn’t need laws mandating maternity leave and free birth control if they were the ones setting, and paying, employee benefits.”
Discrimination! Men don’t get maternity leave! Misandry!
“They wouldn’t need “no means no” if they were the ones making the sexual advances.”
She’s a slut! She was asking for it! She came on to me, of course she consented!
“They wouldn’t need “men can stop rape” if they took responsibility for defending themselves from psychos.”
Women are abusive and vicious! They’re more dangerous than men, see! Men need to be able to hit back!
Never mind the fact that some of this is already happening anyway….and the MRAs dutifully bitch about it.
Oh how they keep whining about maternity leave…
Up here in Canuckistan, maternity leave is one Year. Also, given the average age of first birth, most women have paid for their maternity leave several times over.
How much screaming do you think we’d hear if the government told men that they were on a minimum six month parental leave, and that leave was mandatory? Making sixty percent of what you used to make, with a newborn, is not fun. Taking care of newborns is hard work. Knowing that you’re about to watch your career go down the toilet sucks.
I’ve heard Canadian men bitch about maternity leave, and I’ve yet to see ANY man sacrifice his regular rate of pay to take the full parental leave he’s allowed.
They wouldn’t need “no means no” if they were the ones making the sexual advances.
If everybody was raping each other, nobody would complain about rape! Seems legit.
I like his “separate but equal” plan for dealing with women’s rights. Because historically that kind of thing has worked out really well. I wonder if we’ll have to go live on opposite sides of the country.
If MRAs had their way, every Canadian woman would suddenly find herself living on the Canadian Shield with nothing more than the clothes on her back, being told to stop leeching off all the men.
Shortly thereafter, most Canadian men would also be living way the hell up north, and the MRAs would be bitching about how all the women deserted them and left them with nothing to fend for themselves.
*makes a note on her Christmas gift list*
Oh here you go on that:
http://youtu.be/UMiipGGdHIs
Wow, I never realized that we imagined the systematic oppression this whole time!
Kinda like a horse that has been conditioned to think that when it’s tied to a rope, it can’t go free, even when the other end of the rope is on a miniature plastic chair.
It’s so simple! Hey, you guyze, we can just totally do what ever we want when ever we want, because the oppression isn’t real ! YAY !
//sarcasm//
Hmmm, actually, I’m pretty sure feminism is about gender equality, which necessarily entails the support of the privileged gender class, men.
If you said this in regards to male rape victims, chances are you actually wouldn’t be seen as a champion of men’s rights by people who actually care about men. Just saying.