So over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the regulars are engaging in a bit of self-reflection. Well, that may be a bit of a generous description on my part. They’re discussing the question “Are we fanatics?” Not surprisingly, they conclude that they aren’t.
Yet this is the most upvoted comment in the thread:
Those of you who have studied twentieth century history may have remembered Lady Hitler’s war on the Jews, the Romani people, and homosexuals; the Great Feminist Purges of Lady Stalin; the Cultural Revolution of Lady Mao. (Oh, wait, there actually was a Madame Mao, and she was a pretty evil gal, though she owed her power largely to her husband and was ousted shortly after his death.)
Moving on from all that war and starvation stuff, let’s return to that first sentence, since MRAs are so fond of blaming eeevil feminists for the draft.
The link in that sentence goes to a discussion of an organization called The Order of the White Feather. Take it away, Wikipedia:
In August 1914, at the start of the First World War, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald founded the Order of the White Feather with support from the prominent author Mrs Humphrey Ward. The organization aimed to shame men into enlisting in the British Army by persuading women to present them with a white feather if they were not wearing a uniform.
It’s worth pointing out that at the start of WWI, people of all political stripes and in all the countries involved were pretty gung-ho for the war. Even the big socialist parties of the day quickly forgot their pledges of international solidarity in favor of supporting their national war efforts.
So where do the evil feminists come in? Well, a couple of the most famous British suffragettes signed onto the White Feather crusade: Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. And yes, they supported compulsory national service — though they supported it for both men and women: men would go to war, while women would be required to work in factories.
Of course, the Order of the White Feather didn’t represent all feminists at the time. Indeed, it didn’t even represent all the Pankhursts: Christabel’s sisters Sylvia and Adela were pacifists.
Even aside from all that blather about feminists being responsible for wars and concentration camps, it’s highly misleading to present the story of the Order of the White Feather as “proof” that feminists are warmongering all-male-draft-lovers. As a quick visit to Google will demonstrate, feminism has a long history of antiwar activism, dating back to the 19th century — when feminists first organized Mother’s Day as a protest of war.
But, hey, MRAs, if you want to invent your own mythological version of history, knock yourself out. You only make yourselves look like the fanatics you are.
Thanks to this thread in the AgainstMensRights Subreddit for pointing me to this most edifying discussion.
The hidden part of history is that women and their mighty sexual power MADE Hitler, Mao, Stalin and all those lovely guys do all the horrible things they did, because we all know only alphas get laid. And nothing says alpha like throwing people in the Gulag for making fun of Papa Stalin’s ‘tache!
As a historian, I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry after reading this…
David, just a suggestion, but an MRA history of the world could be fascinating, and I can think of no better author than your good self.
A mixture of evo-psych, the debunking of the commonly accepted causes of war, replaced with the real cause (evil ladies demanding useless things). Then, of course, the twin catastrophes of women being allowed to vote and take charge of their own sex lives.
Gloria Steinem and the C1A started the Vietnam War. What, you can’t handle the truth, sheeeeeeple?
The “Are we fanatics?” question of course made me think of this:
An MRA history of the world would be to laugh forever. Maybe we can crowdsource the research, since we have so many historians here.
Women didn’t have the vote until 1920 in the U.S., or until 1918 in England and Germany, or until 1944 in France, or until 1925 in Italy, or until 1919 in Austria. How does that square with WWI, which was from 1914-1918? Oh, right — it doesn’t.
Yes! Countries without feminism have been the most peaceful states with the highest quality of life for all ever since the 15th century (when the evil war manifesto “city of ladies” was written by a bloodthirsty protofeminist).
[Souce: an MRA’s ass]
I need the MRA History of the world immediately. That’s a brilliant idea.
Wow. They can’t even actually use real history, like Prohibition or the temperance movement, which feminism was also a big part of back in the day. (Also abolitionism, though racism was a huge problem.) They have to use imaginary history.
Out queer folks, until recently, weren’t conscriptable either. (And trans folks still aren’t.) Obviously, this means people like me are CONTROLLING THE WORLD! AHAHAHAHA!
Mrs. Stalin, a highly cultured and intelligent woman, committed suicide. Stalin blamed her death on “romance novels.”
@carnation
I agree, and it would only take David less than 5 minutes to write. It would go a little like this –
“MRA History of the World
If anything bad happened, it was all the women’s fault.
The End”
@LBT: Pfft. It’s obviously my wee babies in charge of the world. They’re like drill sergeants. When they shout, everybody hops to, lickety-split.
I see the OP went to the NWO School of International Relations (Bitches Ain’t Shit, But They Start Wars).
@Linden: To be fair, I think France might have given women the vote earlier than 1944 if it weren’t for the whole occupied thing.
I thought famines were caused by droughts, flooding, plant diseases, political instability, wars, colonialism, poverty, and corruption. I thought wars were caused by complicated geopolitical alliances along with competition for limited land and resources. But apparently, none of that is true. It’s all because women vote.
“Facts Are For Manginas” – International “mens’ rights activists” slogan.
Of course, this does not explain any war which took place before 1918… And why, if these women control government, has there never been a woman president or vice president? And why, for pity’s sake, are we having all this controversy about control of women’s bodies? If we control the government, why aren’t we suppressing those anti-abortion/anti-contraception folks? Do these guys actually LISTEN to themselves? Can any of them say “logic”?
I would like to invite any MRAs reading this to study any of the following topics:
World War One
The Spanish-American War
The US occupation of the Philippines
The Indian Wars
The US Civil War
The Mexican-American War
The Seminole Wars
Slavery in the US
History (any (at all (seriously, just any history)))
“And why, if these women control government, has there never been a woman president or vice president?”
Because ladybrains. Also, manbrains are perfect.
This is also ridiculous because most countries don’t get to have a countrywide vote on whether or not the country goes to war. Sure, in the US, congress does (usually, *grumble secret drone war grumble*) but most of our congress is and always has been made up of men voting on these wars (again, usually).
Trying to cite women’s suffrage as the beginning of a bunch of wars and horrors because women got the right to vote, implies that women were voting to go to war. Which is not only stupid, but demonstrative of a willful ignorance of how shit actually happens. I mean, just looking at current events demonstrates this, or does this dipshit really think that women are voting right now to impose a 20 week abortion ban on all people with uteri?
TL;DR not only do these guys apparently not know history, they also seem to have a problem with understanding the basics of modern politics.
These concepts were all taken from a very cursory skim through the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Prehistory by MRAs
If you look at the actual hunter gatherer societies that remain in the world they are all extremely Patriarchal (in the original sense of the world in that the Father is the head of the family unit). This is because societies like that tend to be extremely violent. Men die in hunts and raids against other tribes and women only die of old age (kind of like now where only men die in war) outnumber men in the actual tribe. This leads naturally to polygamy and women doing most of raising of children and all of the camp chores, when they’re not busy foraging for berries and thereby evolving a love for lipstick and sweets. Of course, prehistoric males would also have been involved in the development of their offspring. Play and nurturing and teaching. We see the same behavior in dogs and cats, so no study is needed for that. But given the rivalries of the time, the constant need to protect territory and protect one’s tribe, the main male role would have been defence and provision. Don’t need a study for that either.
To talk about science for a minute, “biologically” men and women ARE different! Why you ask? Because they are two different genders (or sex) (I don’t know the difference don’t ask me to Google it). Evolution has produced all kinds of differences between the sexes. On top of the differences in genitalia, there is also distinct neural circuitry differences. Ladybrains are literally different from manbrains. Different biochemistries, and also hormones, skeletal structure etc. It’s just science, and I wish females weren’t so defensive about it. And it is all a result of adaption to our environment, culture and evolution from millions of years from prehistory to today. Different brain structures have a proven effect on cognitive ability, which is why men evolved to have more ambition. Men know they need worldly success and riches (bigger spears! more mammoth flesh!) to get a sex or marriage partner. Women know they just need to complain about things. If men offer them a solution, or a logical, proven explanation, women have evolved to call you an apologist and send you on your way. Oh, and also beware of rationality. Women evolved not to like that.
So anyway, once a bunch of people who think like that get together, they form a Crowd and find someone to blame for their problems — spirits, tribal leaders, or later on, Kings, the Government, religion, Men, Whites, etc. — and then go about destroying that group.
Once they have, however, it doesn’t solve their problems. “New boss, same as the old boss.” But again, that is what females like anyway, having an opportunity to complain. This is why they would manipulate the men sexually, and then say “Go hunt more mammoth, I’m sick of eating berries all day!” or “I know I told you that if you killed Og it would make me happy, but now that Og’s dead I’ve realized it’s really Gorp that is making me unhappy. Kill him!” And so on, and so on, which is how we have history.
Oh also, the reality is that there have been slave classes throughout history that occupied the overt positions of power while still being slaves. Certain psychological pressures could be applied to the slaves in order to turn them into the kind of slaves that could be trusted with power, even over their actual masters (who pretend to be the real slaves). They were scarred with shame while being taught to take their sense of belonging from their actual masters. This is how prehistoric females created a system of shadow power governed by shame and belonging. The class that is shamed–the (male) slave class–is constantly trying to earn a sense of belonging from the class that is seen to have innate value–the (female) master class–and the slave class earns that belonging through labor and warfare. This is how women have the ultimate power under patriarchy.
Probably most people understand this. But strangely the overly academic theories of feminism and their adherents totally miss this.
Cloudiah, I applaud you.
Clearly women will go to great lengths to conceal their treachery, even making up an organization led and founded by men to “persuade” them to do what they were obvz gonna do anyway!
The American Revolutionary War according to MRA’s
In the 1700s, the colonists were happy and peaceful to everyone. Some feminists and politically correct people of color whined, but they were just wanting entitlements paid for by STEM majors’ taxes. Anyway, King George told the colonists, “Hey, you guys need to man up and pay taxes!”. The colonists said, “Fuck that. I’m going my own way. I won’t pay taxes so that feminists in Europe can buy fancy dresses and get their hair cut like Victoria Beckham!”
So they declared war on the white knights in England. The wimminz kept saying, “Be a man and go to Valley Forge with George Washington!” So the blue pillers fell for their lies hook, line, and sinker. A whole bunch of men died in battle while women laughed, ate bon bons, and sewed American flags. Molly Picher offered water to the weary soldiers, because she was a FeMRA. So the colonists won no thanks to the women, and all the white dudes lived happily ever after, except for that blue pill Kool Aid drinking King George.
20th Century according to MRAs
ANDREA DWORKIN SAID ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS and that’s why we can’t have nice things.