So here’s an interesting chart. Guess what it represents?
A) The membership of the David Duke Fan Club
B) The racial breakdown of the most successful Liberace impersonators
C) The demographics of the Men’s Rights subreddit
Well, ok, that was too easy. It is of course all of the above. I’m guessing. It’s definitely C, at least, as this chart was prepared to show the results of the 2013 Men’s Rights subreddit demographic survey.
Now, you might say, well, isn’t Reddit itself a pretty white place? And you would be right. But the Men’s Rights subreddit seems to be a bit whiter — and a lot less black — than Reddit as a whole, if Quantcast’s estimates of Reddit’s overall ethnic breakdown are accurate.
In other completely non-surprising news, 89% of Men’s Rights Redditors are men. And a lot of them are libertarians. MRAs complain endlessly that we pigeonhole them as a bunch of entitled white dudes. They’re really not doing much to challenge that assumption.
The most important issue to these fellas (and the small minority that aren’t fellas)? Survey says: False rape accusations.
Other critical issues to the Men’s Rightsers include “custody rights” (which is a bit odd because 92% of those surveyed have no kids), “legal discrimination” (whatever that means), “education discrimination” (this is a thing?), and “male disposability.”
“Male birth control” and “paper abortion,” while relatively less important to the Men’s Rightsers, each got hundreds of votes.
I’m surprised “friendzoning” isn’t at the top of the list, but unfortunately it wasn’t one of the choices. I blame misandry.
I always wonder about the double period. It’s quite common among trolls and almost unknown among non-trolls. The frequency of occurrence and the complete dearth of other double punctuation (say, double commas) suggests that it can’t be an accident, yet unlike other common grammar mistakes, there’s no obvious source of confusion that would lead them to think it was correct. Is it supposed to be a period? An ellipsis? Is there some prominent yet grammar-impaired blogger who’s the source of this error?
Or is there really only one troll?
I spent about 7 hours in the car today, driving to Place X, to be there for all of 1 hour, and then drove back home. I wasn’t going to see friends or so anything fun, it was an inconvenient necessity. I was by myself in the car the whole day and didn’t even listen to a lot of music.
After scrolling this thread, I’ve concluded I spent my day in a way that had more value than reading just one of Obtuse’s comments. Jesus wept.
Fibinachi, great comment!
Argenti, thanks for doing the survey! I did a post about it.
And on a completely other note, O said in passing that our dear friend Hugo Schwyzer was no longer associated with Jezebel. Not sure where he got this, er, info, but Hugo wrote something for Jezebel not three days ago, so I’m pretty sure he’s still writing for them.
drst – spot on.
I’m sorry, I’m still catching up! I kinda missed just how large this thread has become. Yikes.
“O: Indeed; but how many of them support it for the simple reason that Men ought to be able to find sexual satisfaction with those whom they deem desirable, and are willing to do so?”
Because that has nothing to do with human rights. Sex with a HB10 is not a right, sorry. Women are people, even women who sell sexual services. Sex workers rights are about making sure that the workers are treated fairly and can make good choices. It is also about making sure that men are protected from being jailed for using their services. It is not about men being able to have any kind of sex with any woman he wants to. Sex workers can and do turn away certain clients with certain sexual tastes. Full decrim would make the work out in the open and lessen things like trafficking and abusive pimps.
As far as I can tell IMBRA is due to men abusing and murdering foreign women they brought here as mail-order brides. I don’t see how this is stopping men from marrying anyone. It is set up to protect people who are in a vulnerable position being exploited and it says in the wiki that dating sites have grown to appreciate it.
Well thanks for teaching me a new word though. I didn’t know what trivium was.
By the way if you are trying to come off as pompous and pedantic you are doing a bang up job.
I am not preaching, just trying to present my views honestly. You on the other hand seem only willing to shove your blog down our throats and act generally troll-like.
Dvar: “I don’t find skinny women attractive and I’ve only slept with more or less chubby ones, but I somehow still manage to respect my own skinny self.”
I have no type and I am I guess what is called omni-sexual (does this include trans* people?). I love fat, skinny, muscular, waif-like and any race/ethnicity of all people. I just see one thing=human. I am short, boxy and muscular and androgenous. I have also never seen any feminist talk about trying to make people date anyone they aren’t attracted to, nor have I ever seen anyone talk about appearance in such a hateful way as they do in the MRM. Variety is what makes the human race so prolific! Celebrate it.
I really don’t understand where this “feminists want to make men date fat women/older women/whatever” stuff comes from*. Dude, if you find women in group X repulsive then trust me, they probably don’t want to date you either! Why anyone would think that feminists would concern ourselves with trying to persuade people in group A to fuck people in group B in a general sense I’m not sure.
*I strongly suspect that the answer may be “some petulant manchild’s ass”.
It’s probably yet more projection. They’re dead keen on women being required to fuck them on demand, and presume women feel the same way about men.
It does seem like the kind of thing that GGG might come up with while trying to wrap his head around the notion that if, as we keep telling him, women are people, then we must want the same things that he does. Right? That’s how it works, right?
The double period is some kind of ellipsis,like I would like to write more or explain more, but I won’t do it here, because {That is beneath me ; you wouldn’t understand anyway; I’m far too smug for that; can’t you see I’m busy, Real Men will understand anyway}..
I think what happens is that when feminists say, “Be respectful to fat people. It is wrong to fat shame them.”, the PUA’s hear, “You are obligated to fuck fat women to prove you’re not fat phobic”. Their “logic” here is just completely bizarre.
They are also mad that more and more, other people call them out when they act like assholes to fat women. Fat jokes and fat shaming used to be more socially acceptable, and jerks would cheer about Al Bundy making fun of fat women. Now things are changing, although it is still pretty bad. It is more likely that if they make obnoxious comments, that other people will stick up for the fat women.
So because these guys are so self absorbed, they think they are oppressed by other people telling them they are assholes. It never registers to them that fat women are people with feelings in any of this.
Again, it seems to be projection. Notice how often MRAs, PUA, and incels interpret “woman doesn’t want to have sex with me” as “woman doesn’t treat me as if I’m human”? I think they’re universalizing from their own (deeply fucked up) perspective.
Bionicmommy/Cassandra: And when you ask them for examples of this attitude (that dudes can’t have preferences) they flake, and stammer,and fail to provide any.
“does this include trans* people?”
Generally I’ve seen that answer as “yes, it does”. But pansexual’s the same in that regard. (And plenty of people who ID as bisexual don’t mean cis men and cis women, it gets complicated when you get from “trans* people are people” to “trans* people sometimes have sex”)
You probably hit the nail on the head there!
As I said in another thread, I’m skinny myself, but my taste in women really go towards the chubbier. Like, I wouldn’t find my own clone sexually attractive. (Sorry for the boner report, but I think that this particular one is fairly innocent and relevant to the point I’m gonna make.) This, fortunately, does NOT mean that I have to disrespect myself, hate myself or think of myself as subhuman. Neither does it mean that I have to consider Husband, who thinks I’m super attractive, weird or objectively wrong in his preferences.
Oops, saw now that I made that point in this very thread, I thought it was somewhere else I said that. Sorry for repeating myself.
Regarding the issue of pan vs bi that Argenti discusses, I tend to identify as bi rather than pan. Mostly because I’ve been calling myself bi since I came out of the closet when I was nineteen; back then I didn’t even know the word “pan”. Nowadays, I must say I’m not quite certain what “pan” means and if and if so how it differs from “bi”. I’ve heard different people use different definitions; there’s probably no right one. One definition I’ve heard is that bi people only want to sleep with either men or women, while pan people also are attracted to genderqueers. According to that definition I might be pan – I’ve only slept with men and women as far as I know, but I can’t be certain of course, and I can’t know the exact gender identity of every person I’ve felt sexually attracted to (since I’m the kind of person who really finds loads and loads of people attractive, not just people I personally know). Another definition I heard is that pan people are “gender-blind”. I’m not certain I even understand what that means, but… I guess I might not be “gender-blind”? Because I tend to find different kinds of features attractive in men vs women?
Feels just easier to call myself “bi”. Not the least since people outside of particular radical/queer/sex-positive feminist spaces knows what that means.
Dvärghundspossen — pretty much what you said applies to me too. I’m cool with sexytimes (with people also interested) regardless anatomy, though androgyny does more for my immediate “yes, attractive” meter. But I’ve ID’ed as bi since like 16 or so, and like you, didn’t know pan was a thing then (this is part of why I put the three together on the sexuality section of the survey actually, the differences in who you’re attached to, and how, seem small and hard to quantify, and yep, plenty of people don’t have a clue what the difference is // realize pan exists)
Semi-funny story about the term omnisexual. First time I heard it was regarding Captain Jack, so in my mind it includes aliens capable of consent (LBT, maybe M.D.’s zapping isn’t so squicky?)
My brain is made of jello.
You know, there’s a particular gender identity that I’m often super attracted to and I don’t know quite how to explain it. Men who’re androgynous and very pretty (as opposed to handsome) facially but with a typically masculine (though skinny) body shape? With a presentation that’s noticeably gentle and often perceived by others as feminine or gay (I’m talking behavior and personality now, not looks)? Anyone who’s known me for any length of time can spot guys who I’m likely to go for because they fit into that specific gender niche immediately, but I have no idea if there’s a less wordy way to explain it.
When I say I’m bisexual, I mean I am capable of being attracted to people with the same gender or with different genders than myself. And this shouldn’t need to be said, but since the question always seems to arise when these discussions come up, when I say “same gender” I am of course including trans women as well as cis women.
Viscaria — nail head, you hit it with that “shouldn’t need to be said”.
I’m slowly catching up on the ridiculous amount of comments here so forgive me for constantly being pages behind but I find it funny that Obsidian seems to think these sex/gender activist movements should be inherently racist in the beginning until they’ve had a few decades to mature. He bases this on how feminism had severe racism issues during the initial waves while ignoring that it was a time in which we were still growing as a country to move out of our overtly racist past. Not to say there are no longer problems with racism, of course there are, and not to say that racism was justified, and of course there are going to be feminists who are insensitive to issues of race simply because there are a lot of people who are insensitive to issues of race. But you don’t have the unapologetically racist society who still participates in legal segregation to consider for the bass of your movement’s blatant racism…. you just have a bunch of racist dudes in a society where that type of ignorance is willful. You don’t get a get out of jail free card for being a young movement when the movement started in a time where mainstream media put tons of focus and energy on promoting equality. But keep comparing apples to oranges I guess.
RE: CassandraSays
You mean you might be… ‘meterosexual?’ *ducks rotten fruit*
RE: Argenti
LBT, maybe M.D.’s zapping isn’t so squicky?
Definitely doesn’t have to be. Alas for her, Raige isn’t into it. Her zapping doesn’t get used outside of combat or practical use, really. (Jumper cables!)
@Cassandra – that’s the type of man I’ve been mentally* attracted to since forever. Must have long hair and moustache, but feminine features, and a softish body type (ie. not the inverted carrot look – I don’t like really wide, square shoulders). No wonder I couldn’t look away from Mr K’s picture the first time I saw it. 😛
*wouldn’t have acted on it if I’d met one in real life; this was all pictorial.