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.
Honestly, when I was hunting for the link, I kind of told myself “Maybe I can finally ninja Argenti or Kitteh!”
ROFL and you did! Success!
Great MRA histories! This is my first post; I was interested in the MRA for a while but the more I learn about them the more skeptical I am. I’m starting to learn about feminism instead.
Aww thanks guys!
re: White Feather Feminists.
If you study the history, you’ll notice that it was war-mongering, White-Feather-campaigning Christabel and Emmeline who garnered political success from their support of the ruling class’ war… By their helping to herd millions of men* to their deaths in the trenches, through the then-powerful tool of shame, they got what they were after.
Pacifist, communist Sylvia did not acheive her political goals.
This willingness to “throw others under the bus” is a characteristic of all successful politicians, (and it applies to feminist politicians as much as any other) most of whom will never have to run the risk of being killed in war. So they tend to be pretty gung-ho about starting them (e.g. Blair, Bush)
There is a lot to be said for the idea that once the executive has called for war – that there should be a vote, with only those who will fight and risk their lives getting to vote on whether a war should go ahead (e.g. as in early Rome). It would probably cut down on a lot of corporate-backed slaughter. Of course, that’s why it’ll never be permitted by the ruling class.
(*most of whom did not have the right to vote either. Due to property qualification requirements at the time.)
(**either due to their being women who are exempt from conscription, or due to class priveleges e.g. GWBush getting strings pulled so he could be assigned to the Texas Air Force to stay out of Vietnam)
Another prominent example of a feminist with very nasty politics indeed is Marie Stopes, famous founder of the Family Planning movement in the UK. She was strongly motivated by her racist beliefs in eugenics, she believed that Family Planning would help get rid of undesirable non-white people. Stopes was a huge fan / admirer / had an unrequited love for Hitler. To the exent she wrote him adoring letters of praise.
So, yeah. Feminism has a dirty history, like all power-movements.
An MRA’s history of The Battle of Little Bighorn
The Cowboys and Injuns were sent to battle by their feminist whore wives with the promise that they will finally be able to stick their poles into their holes. The white women and Lakota women met over bon bons and conspired to send their husbands to their deaths so they could collect their life insurance money for scented fucking candles….
Rarrrgh! I can’t do this, and I’m sorry for what I already did so far!
@Malte,
Welcome! I’m glad you enjoyed it. I love history, too. It was my minor back when I was in college. I bet it’s awesome to study medieval studies in a PhD program.
I also love Renaissance festivals. They let me see the romanticized version of medieval Bavaria but with running water and all the other modern luxuries I like.
And because I know someone is going to want a citation on Stopes:
http://www.ibtimes.com/marie-stopes-womens-rights-activist-or-nazi-eugenicist-848457#
In other news, the MGTOWs single out a woman to berate with entire forum threads because they didn’t like her dating sit profile.
http://www.xojane.com/sex/men-going-their-own-way-forums-has-a-whole-thread-dedicated-to-what-a-whore-i-am
*site
Whoops.
Hi Malte! And hi God’s fool, do you mind sharing a welcome package with Malte?
And I see First Joe is back, like a recurring infection. Maybe we can all agree to just ignore him. Or maybe I can call in the C1A and the N5A to go after him! As we all know, Gloria Steinem is tightly linked to the C1A, so probably Oprah controls the N5A or something.
The French Revolution
France was in considerable debt, due mostly to Marie Antoinette’s extensive wig collection. The obvious answer to this was to create and then reduce income tax, and form and then abolish a central bank, but the French were too deeply mired in cultural Marxism or cultural Rousseauism or whatever. Louis XVI, the famous ‘beta king’ could do nothing to rein in his wife’s profligate spending habits, and so France drifted towards ruin. Marie Antoinetter herself tried to fix the problem by baking cupcakes, because her ancestors were gatherers, thus evolutionarily leaving her with a predeliction for cream cheese frosting.
Where the Hell was I? Oh, yeah. The women of France quickly formed a conscription committee and made the men march on the Bastille while they stayed at home crocheting baguettes. This was all part of the Feminist cause, as proven by the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges, who were basically the Andrea Dworkin and Sharon Osbourne of their day.
Soon the country was involved in the Reign of Terror, which is the only bit of the French Revolution that’s in the movies, and so the only bit that happened. Madame Guillotine invented the terrible (albeit highly cinematic) execution tool. Women sat by it, knitting as men were executed. Oh, and Mary Antoinette and Olympe de Gouges, but that was probably just a fluke.
The only solution to this came in the form of super-alpha Napoleon, who was such a bad-boy thug that all the women creamed their panties and came over onto his side. The men knew that he was an evil dictator, but had to do what their wives said, or else they’d have to cook their own food, and the microwave hadn’t been invented yet. The revolution was over — but at what cost?
Good timing – my welcome package was lying around all unloved – God’s Fool, you are most welcome to it! 🙂
CIA CIA MOOSLIM MOOSLIM TERRORIST
CIA CIA MOOSLIM MOOSLIM TERRORIST
BETTER BEAT FEET BACK TO YOUR HOUSEBOAT IF YOU DON’T WANT THE SKEERY MOOSLIM SECRET AGENTS TO FIND YOU, JOE
I KNEW we could crowdsource a history of the world through the eyes of MRAs, I just KNEW it. [claudiah’s eyes brim over with joyful tears]
@Sir Bodsworth – crocheting baguettes, you say?
@ Kittehserf – Mon dieu! C’est magnifique!
This is one of the most entertaining threads I’ve ever read here.
History + MRA nonsense = Fun
@Falconer – are you sure you don’t mean a Mooselim terrorist?
@Sir Bodsworth – it gets better!*
For the true French touch, there are crocheted croissants
and for the ultimate in misandry, CROCHETED BONBONS!
*for a given value of “better,” possibly equivalent to “more bizarre”
Next up, culture!
Goneril and Regan make Lear divide his kingdom between them, but Cordelia is such a hypergamous little weasel that she gets the King of France to invade and murder Lear because she wants both France AND England. Oh and she incites Edmund to go around killing people, too.
Then Ophelia and Titania and Beatrice team up to humiliate Prince Hal by giving him donkey’s ears and Cleopatra unleashes bears upon Prospero because she wants her pound of flesh.
Welcome, Malte and God’s Fool 🙂
@First Joe, are you going to throw Margaret Sanger’s racism and support of eugenics in our faces too? Because let me tell you, this is novel information. Totally new. I’m shocked (SHOCKED!) that prominent feminists of the past had terrible beliefs. No one has ever talked about this ever before. There certainly isn’t any writing out there by feminists discussing and condemning it. No sirree.
But, AK, this revelation flies in the face of our long-held feminist conviction that woman = perfect and man = evil.
I’m having a real crisis here.
@cloudiah: I’d forgotten about the feminist broadswords and their hatred for jugglers, and especially about the stamen of privilege. Thanks for the lols, it was like reading it for the first time.