Don’t worry, it’s not a video BY an MRA. It’s a video ABOUT MRAs. A little cartoon, to be specific, by Scott Benson, who has this to say about it on his Vimeo page:
A quick editorial cartoon about the intersection of self-pity, entitlement, rape, territoriality, misogyny and fear of women. You see it all over the place online in the form of Men’s Rights Activists (of whom there are a few reasonable non-misogynists), Men Going Their Own Way, Pick Up Artists, and dudes touting the “Red Pill”, because The Matrix is a good movie. Look any of these up if you have the stomach for it. These are extreme examples, but watered-down forms of these ideas are everywhere.
In lurking their blogs and youtube channels for a while, I’ve noticed that beyond the standard patriarchal chauvinism there is this deep fear of women – what they will do to me, how they will reject me, how they will use me, how they are changing society in a way that does not favor me, how they are making men into something I don’t like, how they are making themselves into something I don’t like, that they won’t give me what I want, and that they won’t give me what I think is rightfully mine. This goes beyond fear of feminism- this is fear of women at its purest. And that, to quote a puppet, leads to anger and hate. It’s sad.
Naturally, Benson had to close the comments to the video because of, you know, too much MRA.
He wrote more about it all on his Tumblr.
I was alerted to the video by various people, including Cloudiah, which reminds me to remind you all to go look at Cloudiah’s excellent Artistry for Feminism And Kittens blog.
Welp, that’s my new favourite video.
David, your bribe is in the mail. Thank you for mentioning my blog, which is a (entertaining, I hope) parasite on your blog.
And this video, words can’t express how much I love it — everything from the perfect music, to the animations, to the message, to his Tumblr post about it.
You know, I ended up (despite all my best efforts) listening to “Accidental Racist” the other day and I’ve been trying ever since to put my finger on exactly why I fount it so very irritating. I was watching this video and it occurred to me that, boiled down, what it amounts to is
“Don’t hate me for wearing this symbol representing the systematic degradation and repression of a group of human beings based solely on a specious, pseudo-scientific idea. I just like one particular subgroup of people who used the symbol as a bit of empty nostalgia, and some of my friends are black! I’m totally a nice guy if you just get to know me!”
Wow. I would rate that video as excellent. It’s succinct as hell. The image of a man getting most of the ice-cream, then when a woman finally gets to have her share, the man figure throws a tantrum. Then the robotic voice repeating, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” followed by “I’m afraid of myself, I’m afraid of women.” Yeah. Irrational. It reminds me of all the times a male co-worker has told me I was only hired because I’m a woman.
“I’m afraid, I’m afraid….”
“fount”? Really? Go to bed, Gillian, you’re drunk.
His Tumbler statements are awesome. This is part of it:
” It’s almost like women are still only getting a foothold in a lot of societal niches that men take for granted. But they get that one scoop of ice cream from the endless ice cream pump and all some men can see is that there is one less scoop for them. And until someone comes up with something better, Feminism is the only game in town really fighting the fight to figure this shit out. If MRA want to take up that mantle, they had best start weeding out the trolls and misogynists before they ask anyone to take them seriously. Because they’ve got more of the latter than the former. I’m all for addressing issues that men face. I am a man, of course. But blaming women and feminism for this shit is just as disingenuous as white people blaming the civil rights movement for removing their special water fountains, whites only housing and- gasp!- attempting to address the institutional inequality in hiring and college admissions. Won’t someone think of the poor white folk?
I would argue that this video DOES address men’s issues. Men are hurting themselves with this reactionary, angry, fearful shit. Let’s start with that, maybe, and work up to the portrayal of dudes in cleaning product commercials.”
It’s tumblr, not tumbler. Sorry.
Seriously, that animation of the ice cream is so ridiculously poignant and on point. It’s always kind of unreal, and AWESOME, when a man does this kind of thing, because I know I can’t be heard as well because my voice is pitched higher and I’m just here for making babies (never!) and various assorted reasons that assume women are some sort of monolith and not actual thinking people. Only David could have made this blog and still be taken seriously, but he’s been rolling with the punches for years (said punches being mostly called fat and a mangina) and he still does it, because he sees the death and rape threats women get when saying the same thing, and continues to speak out on our behalf, because he can, and he will.
Anyway, thank you David.
Shiraz, I speak and declare that you shall be forgiven for spelling things the correct way instead of the ways of the Internetz. This time. 😀
Heh, thanks cloudiah. 🙂
“Feminism is the only game in town really fighting the fight to figure this shit out.”
What an awesome declaration.
This video is still awesome. 🙂
LOVE it
More of this artist’s tumblr comments:
“It’s fear. It’s fear of feminism, but most of everything I just listed goes beyond that- it’s fear of women. Witness the “nice guys” who feel cheated that a girl they were nice to isn’t responding in kind with sex. Witness the gamers who talk about how women laughed at them in high school and so fuck them, dude, they just like the jocks. Witness the guys who are angry that the woman at the office “just can’t take a joke”. This is all fear, fear of rejection, fear of losing the place in society one thinks men are entitled to, fear of the chaos that having a woman around might cause. Not every viewer is going to see themselves in it. And certainly people are complicated and even dumb ideas are just as complicated. But I think a lot of people (including myself earlier in my life), might see a little bit of themselves in it. Or at least that’s the hope, and the responses I’ve been getting overwhelmingly affirm this.”
Ha, that was awesome! I might bookmark that for possible emergency use after my interview this week. After the last group of odd, engineer knuckleheads who didn’t like someone who asked “why” instead of “how high” and had the temerity to not succumb to the vapors at the thought of rough men or dangerous equipment (not a euphemism) – I’m wary of how this group will turn out. I’m getting good vibes, but you can never tell…
I definitely should have watched this while stoned.
Hey y’all, been a long-time reader and – after realizing I actually had a WordPress account – decided to chime in.
I came across the video a few days back and loved it. It’s brief but really succinct. His response to the anonymous comment, even if it is a bit wordy, does summarize my problems with the MRA and how juvenile their position is. I’m not in any way perfect and would be lying if I didn’t say that, at one point, I had similar feelings of bitterness towards women – but I moved on and improved on who I was by coming to understand that it wasn’t a healthy or productive way of thinking. Most of these guys see, stuck in the same mindset they were as teenagers; any slight criticism towards them makes them explode in rage and construe a myriad of excuses that are nonsensical (“I’m not a misogynist – I just dislike feminism!”) along with constant self-victimization (though they love to accuse others of such) leading to paranoid theorizing based on pure conjecture (I’ve NEVER seen one cite sources that weren’t from MRA sites, which is like a religious zealot using the Bible to “prove” how “true” the Bible is), all while not realizing that being jackasses is not given immunity under “free speech.” Weird, however, given they stop giving a shit about such once they can stalk and harass someone who said something they dislike (HOW DARE THEY?!?!).
It’d all be hilarious were it not for the fact I hear these kind of sentiments in real life and had former friends who started spewing such bile. For a period of time, I had been ignoring MRAs and their activities for a while until a friend on Facebook decided to post GirlWritesWhat and Warren Farrel videos. I bothered to point out my problems with them (basically how nothing they said about history or human behavior was at all true), wherein he got defensive and started with this “that is your truth, not mine” because he couldn’t counter anything I said and had the gull to ask me to “agree to disagree”. ‘Cause stuff like that is no different than preferring chocolate over vanilla, right? I don’t tolerate that shit with Creationists and I won’t with misogynistic creeps. You don’t just make absurd, all-encompassing claims about reality and then dismiss disagreement of any sort as “censorship” (yet another word they have no understanding of) or not bothering to back it up in any way. People do it too often these days and it becomes dangerous when it actually warps minds like this.
I feel completely validated right now. Wow. This is actually an amazing feeling.
Love this. Yay for Scott Benson
Welcome, saintnick86! I’m glad to hear you hate GWW as much as I do and for the same reasons.
Did you ever watch her video about Nice Guys (TM)? It was awful.
N00b!!! Don’t worry, that’s a welcome cry around this parts, please take one complimentary welcome package and enjoy your stay 🙂
Around these* parts >.<
I’m going to bed (for real this time) g’night
A little bit of analysis on the symbolism in the cartoon:
Notice how when the guy is eating the ice cream, his cone is never empty. Even when he’s eating, the red scoop stays. Then at the end, the machine keeps dropping ice cream even when the woman is gone. This shows us how rights are not limited in supply, and letting her have some doesn’t mean he can’t eat anymore. And privilege means you always had rights by default, but you’re often not even aware of it because, hey, it’s always been there (hence the guy ignoring that red scoop).
I haven’t, mostly ’cause hearing her make the same (incorrect) point over and over for 20 minutes the few times I have made me want to blow my brains out. What I don’t get about FeMRAs is how they can be THAT hostile to other women, when they should be able to empathize given they can be just as susceptible to such degrading treatment (MRAs seem to only tolerate them because they assuage their egos). Guess there’s always an “Uncle Tom” when it comes to hate groups – even self-hating Jews can become Neo-Nazis (which, as a Jew, does disturb me). It really must take a lot of energy to be that willfully ignorant to believe horrible things like domestic abuse being positively constructive (I can’t wrap my mind around that at all).
The one my former friend posted was lamenting the “men and women first” rule of the Titanic as somehow devaluing the life of men in society (…wha…?). Other than the fact that rule isn’t implemented anymore – I sincerely doubt it was used because feminists want to devalue the lives of men. Seemed practical (at least at the time) to get women and children to safety first because the earlier could have more offspring and the latter are still young. The fact this is a big deal among MRAs is pretty strange – it’d be like still hating all Mongolians due to Genghis Khan. Though, now that I think about it, that was the exact premise of my favorite SARAH SILVERMAN PROGRAM episode…
Gah, sorry – should’ve clarified I was replying to Aaliyah.