So our old friend Fidelbogen the Counter-Feminist Agent of Male Renaissance has gotten on the Twitter. And even though he hasn’t yet figured out how to replace his generic egg avatar, and has managed to amass only 44 followers (one of them me), he’s been tweeting up a storm in the last couple of days.
Indeed, he’s so proud of his recent tweets that he screenshotted a bunch of them and put them on his blog under the title Casting Your Breadcrumbs Upon the Water. (Huh. I thought the expression was “Cast your bread upon the waters.” Maybe Fidelbogen is hoping to recruit some ducks?)
Anyway, I thought I’d give his timely tweety wisdom a somewhat wider audience. I hope he won’t mind.
Can you all suggest some more Fidelbogenisms for him to post?
I asked OF about that in the other thread! Maybe he’ll answer when his time out is over. I really do want to know why MRAs do that.
Anything with the density of depleted uranium can’t be healthy, even if it is dull as a bowling ball.
I think it’s because they are by and large self-taught. Not that there’s anything wrong with that in and of itself. But MRAs think they’re capable of more/smarter than they actually are. They learn one thing and think they know all the things.
@hellkell
I think you’re right. One online anti-feminist I know (who is pretty much indistinguishable from an MRA even though he doesn’t call himself one) said something like “Men finding women attractive = misogyny. Feminism 101” in response to someone else calling objectification sexist.
It was just one thing he said, but it really exemplified, in my view, the sheer smugness of so many MRAs.
And then there’s the fact that a lot of MRAs are libertarians, who also tend to be very arrogant because of being self-taught. They think they know all the economics and then suddenly they are social justice experts, too. Or something like that.
“The Feminist Agenda is all about the feminist agenda! #TruFaxx #MRA #Tautology”
“Fight them in the beaches! Fight them in the breaches! Fight them in your breeches! #MRA #WardrobeMalfunction”
“Feminists are suppressing time travel! It’s their hypertime nature! #Hypertimoussluts “InfiniteMRA”
“Solanas = Sol, Anas = As An Sol = Feminists are trying to ressurect summerian goddess An to replace the SUN! #MythologySluts #MRA”
“Two birds in the bush is better than one feminists on the couch, because the house is city in Russia! #Idiom #MRA!”
“Feminists are suppressing oppression! Help keep opression real! Fight inclusiveness! #OverlordElam”
“I slept with a girl! #ForneyForPresident”
The combination of smug and dumb or uneducated really brings out my inner snarky bitch, unfortunately. I try to reign it in because in some cases it could seem classist (though with most MRAs I don’t think their poor writing skill have to do with class so much as a refusal to pay attention in class).
Slather yourself in lotions and body mist and suchlike girly fragrance products. Light a bunch of scented candles.* That’ll throw the intellectual bloodhounds off the scent, and you can go back to whatever it was you were doing before Fidelbottom issued his dire warning.
* The frangrance-sensitive will have to come up with an alternative plan. I can’t think of everything.
@CassandraSays, I wonder how the MRM breaks down, class-wise. They’ve always struck me as mostly entitled middle-class dudes, but I have no evidence for that impression.
Re raging at the smug and dumb–I think Edith Sitwell expressed it perfectly:
(Damn Word Press switched my nyms again. Sorry. I’m not intentionally sock puppeteering. )
What a perfect quote. Also, my impression is that most of them are middle class too, mostly because their of how their complaints are focused.
cassandra: now, now, without a full demographic breakdown of them, you best make sure feminism isn’t all middle class too.
/sarcasm
See, the difference between feminism and the MRM is that feminists will openly admit that our movement has historically been dominated by white middle-class women, and that certain segments of it (ie who gets book deals, who gets asked to speak for feminism on CNN) still are. We can also break down the reasons why that happened and in some areas continues to happen, at which point the MRA dudes would be sitting there looking confused and going “wait, what’s kyriarchy?”
Took the hatchlings to the pool. Got plenty of female attention … from the tween set, and their mothers. I don’t think I need to worry about making MRAs think they oughta try carting around an infant as an aphrodisiac, they spend whatever time they have after hating women on trying not to have to care for babies.
Thanks for the story, LBT!
Another difference is that it’s actually possible to find feminists who are decent human beings. The same can’t be said for MRAs – at least in my experience.
They keep telling us that decent MRAs exist, and then pointing us towards people who are awful human beings as “evidence”.
Also! When feminists disagree with each other we have either a civilized argument (good) or a nasty blog war (not good). What we don’t do is threaten each other’s kids.
Also, while of course this isn’t universal, one of the things that I’m very happy to see among many feminists is that they don’t even have tolerance for bigotry against people they don’t like. For instance, when Buntzums/Robert made ableist remarks about JtO in an older thread, everyone called him out for being bigoted even though the notion that JtO is an asshole is widely agreed on. That’s a very good mark of sincerity that I have rarely seen in anti-feminist communities (what a surprise).
Yeah, I don’t like WBB at all, but threatening her or setting the flying monkeys of rage on her or her kids as a result of a disagreement? That’s not on, and I’ll stand up for her no matter how much I dislike her.
Basically if you have any principles at all those principles can’t be suspended just because you don’t like the person who’s being treated in a way that’s wrong.
Or, to be clearer – my ethics are not context-dependent, and if your are you need to reconsider how honest you’re being with yourself.
“cassandra: now, now, without a full demographic breakdown of them, you best make sure feminism isn’t all middle class too.”
Ah, well, among my test sample 6 people answered that, 3 middle class, 2 working class, and 2 lower class (one of which is my broke ass)
It occurs to me that how people define class is country-of-origin dependent, and that may muck up the survey a bit. For example, a Brit probably won’t self-define as working class if they weren’t born into a working class family no matter how broke they might currently be, whereas an American might.
And, on the flip side, my Dad would self-define as working class even though he’s been rather well off for at least 30 years.
Oh, I know. I was just sending up OF’s ridiculous ASSertion (because for all his words, he has yet to bring an argument) that because two things are of similar makeup, they are exactly the same.
A feminist needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle: desperately when on dry land! #narrativebreaking #non-feminist #MHRA #sickburns
The revolution will be non-feminist, because as we all know most successful revolutions aren’t about anything #non-feminist #apatheticresistance
The survey has a good set of defnitions for the classes. They might not be how we’d think of them (I’d think of myself as lower middle class, in everyday terms) but they do provide a consistent meaning for this. It’s more about current income and type of work than anything else.