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“Agent Orange” Addresses the Men’s Rights Movement in Possibly the Most Unintentionally Hilarious Video Ever [UPDATE: Transcript!]

I know. It’s an MRA. It’s nine minutes long. But seriously, just watch it. You won’t regret it.

And, no, it’s not a parody.

If you want to see what the man behind the voice looks like, check out his Gravatar.

After you’ve finished laughing, you can go over and read the catty little thread it inspired over on Antimisandry.com.

Since WordPress now allows us to add polls to our posts I’m adding one right here.

EDITED TO ADD: And now, thanks to serrana, here’s a transcript of the whole bloody thing. Make like a bird, and read it:

I am Agent Orange. I am responsible for the initial collection of data from the now defunct forums of radfemspeak.net. I also recruited most of the team and set forth the vision that would become the Agent Orange Files. I continued promoting the Agent Orange Files during the radfem 2012 fiasco.

I have waited and watched for quite some time the events unfold around me in this broad movement called the MRM. I have seen a sickness strike the heart of what I’ve once considered something grand.

Now, in my capacity as a sort of bird in the sky, I hear rumblings of malcontent throughout the halls of my esteemed brothers. This troubles me as I have not been troubled before. In my life, there has been nothing that has troubled me more. I give of my time, love, and life itself in hopes of creating a society free of misandry, where all humans are judged equally before the laws of nations throughout the world.

Are we still in the wilderness, my brothers, where there are none but our own voices to fall upon our ears? Are we still shouting at the top of our lungs and hearing but a brief echo announcing our solitude? Or have we built a fortress in this cold land, paving paths to others to trade ideas in good faith? Have we not spit in the eyes of our enemies, met them in many skirmishes, and run a sword of truth into the heart of their lies over and over?

We have done much, even to the consternation of those who would use our name in vain for their own petty purposes. We men have refused to back the fight with honeyed words, and bowing to properness and propriety. We have damned the use of all but plain speech in the signing of declarations of war against those who would enslave us. We have spit upon them for good measure as is rightfully deserved.

But the sickness still comes into our fort. It is one borne of temperance of speech that hides half-truths behind the language of our enemies. It poisons the minds of men so they can no longer arm the battlements out of fear of some imagined greater power. It is a false enemy, that never has, and never will have power over the souls of free men.

It has turned brother against brother within the confines of our home. It has distracted us with questions and answers that have no bearing on our lives as free men. We tremble before these questions out of fear of answering to something other than ourselves instead of taking the fight to our enemy. It blinds us to the simplest of answers that we should care not.

We have become complicated, filled with innuendo, brimming with foppishness and base impulse, just like our enemies. We have forgotten the faces of our fathers and grandfathers. We have neglected the pain of our brothers. We have lost sight of our most basic of functions and we are becoming like those we fight in the process.

What are we if not the voice of reason and truth in an otherwise insane world? How did we fall so far as to worry about how possible allies may view us in the future? Do we not stand upon our own merits? Have we not continually crushed our enemies beneath our feet with the weapons of sharp rhetoric and truth spoken with passion and resolve? Do we really care so much about how we are branded that we are willing to sacrifice each other upon the altar of political correctness and forsake our brothers?

Beware of what you say henceforth to each other. You think carefully about our true enemy: identity politics, the politicization of experience. Don’t use dark powers that suggest to us that flowery speech will gather us more bees to make the honey, because that honey is a sour poison that kills us all one by one by one.

Think hard on the cause of suffering among us. Recognize that it is the death of the individual that does this and the removal of accountability and responsibility through the idea that there is collective salvation instead of individual merit, that there is only coercion by their gods instead of the charity of a man, that there is only room for the love of your slavemaster instead of love for yourself.

I have not sat upon a single branch since I have taken flight long ago and I will not do so until the last breath is wrenched from my body through the violence of our enemies or the ravages of age. I have been among you all. I’ve been talking and watching, teaching and learning, healing and tending.

I have been encouraging others to take back their dignity and embark upon a course of action that can best take the fight to our enemy. I hope to help free all men from their self-imposed shackles. My words have rarely been met with derision by those brothers who know me.

Those that have matched wits with me in good faith find me an honorable and competent visionary with the tenacity of a wolverine.

I would ask, but I think it wise to set the example. All of you, lay down your weapons against your brothers in arms immediately, set aside your momentary lapses of reason and come to a table that will soon be provided. Those of you to whom I have whispered secrets before, if you fancy yourself a leader, or a speaker in any capacity, you will come.

There are going to be things to be taught, and revelations that will be made apparent. Those that contribute wisely at the table will walk away with a greater sense of purpose and direction than what we have ever had before.

I promise you magic steel to further our cause. Come, sit beside your brother, though you may have smitten him before. The blood will not be washed away, but regret will at least not hang upon your brow, if you do sit with us.

In the meantime, return to the battlements, and think on this: Remember our enemy that comes from outside our hard-won land. Trust that those not showing up for discourse will have their true colors shown, or are too shamed by their past actions. Remove the names of your brothers from your lips and hold the steel strongly toward the outer walls.

You know where I fly. Send a pigeon or catapult yourself to me, I care not which. I will be waiting impatiently for a response.

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freemage
11 years ago

cloudiah: If you want to see a lot more of the non-asshat variety, I recommend Freethought Blogs, just about any of them. The comments sections of some occasionally get asshats, but even those usually deal with them either by banning, or in a fashion similar to how we take on trolls here.

Tracy
Tracy
11 years ago

Kittehserf: if you’re interested, the Atheist Experience crew are ass-hattery-free (the podcast/show and blog are both great), and the Friendly Atheist is another good ass-hatless blog. Even the commenters are awesome. Both are mainly U.S. focused, still interesting stuff.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

freemage – yeah, Hitchens and Dawkins (don’t know much about Harris) certainly had/have the swelled head thing bad. There’s a touch of the “bad apples in a barrel” thing, too: the asshats, or at least the noisy ones who get attention from the media, giving the wrong idea of a much bigger group.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Tracy – I’ve read The Friendly Atheist on occasion. I’m not that interested in the atheist bloggers in general (I do enjoy the odd dip into Pharyngula, about other subjects – Greta Christina irritates me beyond bearing). I’m not atheist, and not subject to the sort of religious asshattery that permeates US government (separation of church and state, what is that?), so there’s not much to draw me there, and a fair bit that’s just going to be irksome.

Best place for totally non-asshat lovely people who happen to be atheists – or not – is right here, I find. 🙂

ignotussomnium
ignotussomnium
11 years ago

@cloudiah: thanks! Angry kitty seemed appropriate for this site.

Most of the self-important asshole atheists I’ve known got over it after high school. The ones who didn’t tended to be the sort of people who had an unwarranted sense of self-importance coupled with an almost obsessive need to be a misunderstood genius. Is there a name for that? When people get off to the idea that because no one likes/agrees with them it must mean that they are actually right?

Kim
Kim
11 years ago

@Kitteh

I know you hate Dawkins for his sexist attitudes, but he is actually a good scientist who is very good at explaining evolution clearly. Have you ever read any of his books? Climbing Mount Improbable and The Selfish Gene are both well worth reading for anyone not 100% clear on how evolution and genetics work.

I’m pretty sure you slagged off Pinker a while ago too. He’s also a wonderful writer and neurobiologist. Have you read anything of his? The Language Instinct or How the Mind Works for eg. Because you seem very set against both of Dawkins and Pinker for character flaws which have very little to do with the validity of their work.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

@ignotussomnium – we could call it agentorangeitis. 😉

Seconding about the kitty with evil thoughts avatar!

AK
AK
11 years ago

Bob Dole posted:

Hey, you know that woman who went missing in the woods in the northwestern US? She just wanted a man to take care of her: http://www.the-spearhead.com/2013/06/11/naked-woman-goes-missing-in-northwest-woods/

From that article:

I hope she’s alright, but whenever someone gets lost in the woods it’s a race against time. The survivors are, more often than not, healthy young men; the older folks, women and children rarely make it.

So I’ve mentioned before that I do wilderness search and rescue, right? Specifically K9 SAR, meaning that we’re usually out there looking for people who are very lost and often have been out there for days, usually unprepared for the elements.

He is absolutely wrong. Women are less susceptible to hypothermia in general for whatever (seriously, this is a well-known fact), and have a higher survival rate in most wilderness situations. It’s often joked that being young and male is actually the biggest risk factor you can have in the wilderness. Based on my experience, I’d have to agree. The majority of healthy young female subjects we have searched for came home alive; our live find rates for healthy young male subjects is lower. In part that’s because healthy young men seem to chronically overestimate their abilities; they’re usually less prepared in terms of gear and don’t stop and wait for rescue but instead try to walk out on their own (which the majority of the time just gets them more lost).

I really wonder where he gets his information that women die more often than men (lumping women in with children and the elderly even!), since all the actual SAR experience I have directly contradicts that. Oh wait, I bet I can guess…probably pulled it out of his ass like they always do.

katz
11 years ago

The asshattish ones seem to have an overdose of “I am the great white dude who is smarter than anyone else” – I doubt their atheism has much to do with it.

I always thought the atheism was connected to the “smarter than anyone else”; ie, they think they’re super smart for not believing in an invisible bearded guy in the sky. (Not that being an atheist makes you think you’re smarter than everyone else, or vice versa.)

PZ Meyers is definitely cool, though 🙂

Kittehserf
11 years ago

I don’t remember slagging off Pinker, Kim – I can’t say I’ve ever heard of him. 😀

Dawkins is fine in his own subject – that’s why I specified him going on about things he doesn’t know anything about when I pictured him as a bishop. From what I’ve read, his knowledge of various religions is shallow, to say the least. That’s right outside his scientific field. I’m totally not interested in reading science books (I don’t need convincing that evolution is a thing, apart from anything else). Being a great evolutionary biologist doesn’t qualify him to talk like he’s an expert on theology, let alone tell women what our experiences of harrassment and violence are. It’s not his science work that I’m talking: it’s precisely his sexism and arrogance.

I loved it when Andrew Denton wound him up by asking “What’s your star sign?” at the end of Enough Rope. Priceless.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

*talking about. Perils of rapid-edit posting!

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Is the fact that Dawkins is a good writer when he sticks to his field of expertise supposed to excuse his droning on cluelessly about subjects where he doesn’t have any expertise at all? Because if so, nope. Someone can be both very good at their job and completely clueless about other things. If they insist on trying to speak with authority on the things they don’t know much about it should be pointed out that they’re overreaching.

Kim
Kim
11 years ago

I just don’t like seeing ad hominems attacks, which is what happens every time Dawkins name is mentioned.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Given that this is a misogyny-mocking blog people are probably going to bring up his misogyny if and when he’s mentioned.

Amnesia
Amnesia
11 years ago

Thanks for linking to the complaint generator. I put myself in as “The Hon. Amnesia The Forgotten MLA” just for the heck of it. Such fun!

Maybe I’m naturally oversensitive, or maybe someone just slipped me decaf coffee this morning, but I am sure that you, poor harried reader, have suffered from The Hon. Amnesia The Forgotten MLA’s truculent jeremiads and rightly concluded that I, not being one of the many ribald rantipoles of this world, never asked her to tell me how to live my life. It is requisite, even in this summary sketch, to go back a few years to see how she likes to brag about how the members of her camp are ideologically diverse. Perhaps that means that some of them prefer Stalin over Hitler. In any case, Amnesia wants us to emulate the White Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, who strives to believe “as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. Then again, even the White Queen would have trouble believing that ethical responsibility is merely a trammel of earthbound mortals and should not be required of a demigoddess like Amnesia. I prefer to believe things that my experience tells me are true, such as that Amnesia is not the only one who needs to reassess her assumptions. Think about vengeful fault-finders. They too should realize that if Amnesia were paying attention—which it would seem she is not, as I’ve already gone over this—she’d see that she claims that embracing a system of privatism will make everything right with the world. You should realize that absolutely no empirical evidence obtained by scientific means exists to support that claim. Alas, that doesn’t stop Amnesia from going to great lengths to conceal her true aims and mislead the public.

We must worry about two types of pudibund finks: balmy and violent. Amnesia is among the former. She recently claimed that human beings should be appraised by the number of things and the amount of money they possess instead of by their internal value and achievements. I would have found this comment shocking had I not heard similar garbage from her a hundred times before. The real question here is not, “How far do her lies extend?”. The real question is rather, “Isn’t she the inimical master of deceit who recently wanted to conduct business in a crude, lazy way?” We already have our answer: As a respected journalist put it, “The vast majority of Amnesia’s factotums spend most of their lives in one of two places—the local pub or jail.” He probably could have added that Amnesia’s brethren avouch that Amnesia can ignore rules, laws, and protocol without repercussion. This is precisely the non-equation that Amnesia is trying to patch together. What she’s missing, as usual, is that all of the bad things that are currently going on are a symptom of her feral, satanic taradiddles. They are not a cause; they are an effect.

Kim
Kim
11 years ago

Apologies to Kitteh though. I did get it wrong that you mentioned Pinker. It was Aaliyah with this comment

Maybe I’m being harsh, but even if the MRM weren’t horribly bigoted and problematic, the fact that a major hotspot for MRAs lists books by Pinker and Hoff Sommers as recommended reading material would still be a good enough reason to ridicule the movement. Seriously, those two authors are obsessed with straw men and informal fallacies.

Pinker is an author that I recommend to loads of people. Apparently that makes me worthy of ridicule.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Dunno if I’d call them ad hominems. I don’t say “he’s an arsehole, therefore his science is invalid/suspect.” I do say “Dawkins’ ignorance and bigotry on matters of faith, and his ignorance and sexism, if not outright misogyny, show him to be an arsehole, however good a scientist he is.”

Kim
Kim
11 years ago

Bringing up his misogyny and mocking him for it is A-OK. But saying that his misogyny makes nothing he ever did worthwhile is not.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Kim – no worries. If Pinker’d been mentioned as a misogynist I could have slagged him in passing and forgotten the name since! 😀

Kim
Kim
11 years ago

I had read your comments as the former previously, but if they meant the later instead then cool.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Kim – has anyone here done that? Have I given that impression? I know I haven’t the slightest interest in reading his stuff, but I wouldn’t be reading anything on those subjects anyway. Him being a douchecanoe is the icing on the cake.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Yeah, given the quote that you quoted the ad-hom comment makes more sense (couldn’t see what Kittehs might have said to prompt that). Hoff-Summers doesn’t have much credibility as an academic, but Pinker does, so if people are citing his books as a source on his actual field then that’s just kind of, well, he is a valid source as far as that’s concerned. If people are going “let Pinker teach you about feminism/women’s true natures” then that would be silly.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

All’s good, then! 🙂

katz
11 years ago

The trouble with being bright in your own field and a complete ignoramus otherwise (and unaware or unconcerned about the difference) is that, except when you’re writing technical papers for your field, you’re bound to talk a little bit about things that aren’t squarely in it, and your readers don’t necessarily know when you’re speaking out of knowledge and when you’re speaking out of ignorance. Evolutionary biology is itself a big field; for all I know there could be areas within that where Dawkins knows everything and areas where he’s totally bullshitting.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

I’ve never heard of Hoff-Summers, either. I rest, blameless! 😀

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