What do Men’s Rights Activists want? Based on what they actually do, it’s seems pretty clear that many of them want little more than the right to pester women with endless cries of “what about the menz?” But from time to time MRAs will step forward with little bullet-pointed manifestos presenting their grievances — and their goals — to the world.
So today let’s look at one of these little manifestos, from an MRA calling himself TzeTze Anopheles. It’s pretty revealing. And stupid. But that goes without saying.
Tze Tze starts off by demanding:
A complete rollback of all misandric laws. … It is high time we assigned the systematically unjust, contradictory and oftentimes outright insane feminist laws to the dustbin of history.
So what does Tze Tze mean by this? Well, you guessed it: “Paper abortion.” That is, the right of men to abandon their children without penalty.
Reproductive rights must be bestowed on *both* men and women and the cruel farce that is the current family law regime ended. This entails granting men the right to unilaterally “abort” their responsibility for any child they might have sired for the *exact* same time period a woman has to abort her child.
Huh. If this man lives in Texas, should he have to drive to a clinic in another state in order to carry out this “abortion?”
Tze Tze continues:
I want nothing less than the complete removal of sex from the equation regarding laws. By this I mean, that women have to be punished to the same degree as men for the same offenses and the ‘Pussy Pass’ needs to be rescinded. Additionally, I demand that women no longer be excluded from having to register for selective services. Draft has to be unisex.
Given that there hasn’t been a draft for decades, and that it has been feminists, not MRAs, who have been pushing for women to have the same rights to serve as men, I’m not sure this is the gigantic CHECKMATE FEMINISTS issue you think it is.
Tze Tze’s next proposal is a doozy. Indeed, it’s positively Anthony Zarat-esque in its audacity:
A complete segregation in society with regards to schooling and work. By this I mean girl only and boy only schools combined with appropriate education methods tailored to the respective sex’s natural inclinations. With regards to work I mean creating – as best possible – companies that are male only or female only.
Wait, what?
If Feminism’s claim that women can do everything men can do holds water women shouldn’t have a problem with this since it gives them an excellent opportunity to demonstrate this claim by *deeds* not words. Likewise, I am convinced that men – undistracted by the actions of women and without the necessity to sugarcoat everything they say and abide to a totalitarian politically correct behavioural code – can achieve far better performance than we have at present.
Oh, but Tze Tze isn’t done yet. He also demands:
The creation of male only and female only healthcare, pension funds and other social benefit schemes. And here again I say to Feminists who might have a problem with this: put your money where your mouth is. If women are naturally superior at basically everything – as claimed by Feminism – they should be delighted to no longer have to “carry the burden of the inferior male”.
Yeah, I don’t know many feminists who actually think that women are “naturally superior at basically everything,” or who even think about the genders in these terms.
It just seems a little odd that Tze Tze’s grand political program is based largely on playing a weird game of GOTCHA with the straw feminists living in his head.
And men for their part will know that their labour will no longer be abused in order to pay for the entitlement of western “princesses”. I for my part am convinced this would strongly increase the incentive of men to work hard, seeing as they would be sure to actually be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
I’m pretty sure “men for their part” — and even a good number of MRAs — would see your plan as pretty much the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard.
Tze Tze then throws in some garden-variety libertarian nonsense about reducing the size of government and “return[ing] to the US constitution, the original constitution.”
But it turns out he’s got quite an odd definition of democracy, as he then moves on to demand:
A complete reworking of suffrage.
Oh dear. This doesn’t sound promising.
I believe universal suffrage is unbecoming to any republic. When the mob rules democracy degenerates into a corporate circus, a cesspit where corrupt individuals bribe criminals to pose as politicians and the plebs is fooled and hoodwinked on every level.
Yes, “the plebs is fooled.” What kind of elitist can’t master subject-verb agreement?
As such more democracy is actually *less* democracy, and certainly…less freedom.
Black is white! Up is down! Freedom is slavery!
Cats are dogs and dogs are cats!
What I envision is a mechanism by which merit can be determined effectively and suffrage bestowed accordingly.
Presumably this wouldn’t involve a writing test. (See “the plebs is fooled” above.)
Hence, any individual would have the potential to acquire voting rights but only if he or she manages to demonstrate outstanding merit by, for example, inventing a useful technology, creating a successful business, creating excellent works of art, literature or philosophy (and thus demonstrating above standard wisdom). Naturally, this mechanism would have to be balanced out and its details worked out in a holistic sense.
Yeah, that sounds great.
It was nice of Tze Tze to suggest that women might pass this little test of his, but he didn’t mean it. A mere five days after publishing his little manifesto, he published a post with the title “Why Women’s Suffrage Destroys Democracy,” arguing that
Any country that thus gives women the vote is *inevitably* doomed to devolve into tyranny ere long. There is no other possibility.
Too bad, ladies! I guess the vote is too important to be entrusted to you, what with your love of tyranny and all.
Tze Tze moves on from the question of suffrage to another critical question of our age:
A widespread and stringent inquiry into the feasibility of a male contraceptive pill as well as an artificial womb. These two innovations are of pivotal importance as they will finally create absolute equality between the sexes – something women and feminists claim to support. As such I cannot see and will not accept any rejection of this basic human right of man.
Well, get to work on it, dude! As a man with a superior man brain I’m sure you’ll be able to have both of those invented by dinnertime.
Tze Tze then regurgitates some notes he wrote down while reading Warren Farrell — or while listening to some other MRA regurgitate their Warren Farrell notes — demanding
The undisputed right of any man to opt out of traditional male gender roles in very much the same way women have done. If women reject their role as sex objects then men should equally have the right to break their shackles and no longer act as status objects, as disposable instruments for the advancement of the Feminine Imperative.
Go for it, dude. Be as unsuccessful as you damn well please.
Every man should have the right to live his life the way he choses and *nobody* should have the right to shame him for his individual decisions. If a man doesn’t want to marry or start a family with a western woman (or any woman) that is his *own* prerogative and nobody has the right to judge him for that.
Dude, do whatever the hell you want. I would actually prefer it if you didn’t marry or start a family; you’d clearly be a terrible husband and/or father. Just don’t delude yourself by pretending that the women of the world actually give a shit about what you do.
Tze Tze moves on to the most important issue of all: the right to tell rape jokes in a crowded theater.
Either the complete abolition of all P.C. suppression instruments with regards to women’s sensitivities and their concomitant mob hysteria every time a man makes a “sexist” joke *or* the expansion of these same strict standards to include men as well. Basically, if it is not acceptable to make sexist jokes about women or portray them in less than flattering fashion in movies etc. the same applies for men as well.
Do you actually think it’s against the law to “to make sexist jokes about women or portray them in less than flattering fashion in movies etc?” Have you ever seen a movie?
So either stop demonizing men or allow men to likewise demonize women. Anything else is gross hypocrisy.
Well, you’ve declared women to be intrinsically inimical to democracy already, so apparently you were allowed to demonize women all along.
NOTE: In case any of you were wondering about the reference to Anthony Zarat above, he was an MRA who used to hang around these parts, and who had a rather dramatic proposal to solve all our pesky man-woman problems. This little video will explain:
Also, he cited a study in one of his articles about women knowing less about politics…and the survey measured how much women remember from certain world news stories. Women generally scored lower than men, therefore they don’t know much about politics.
Seriously?
Shorter Tze tze:People not agreeing with me automatically = hate and irrationality. Because I am right. About everything.
Okay, maybe that wasnt shorter, but it was more honest.
I love how MRAs always claim to be so logical and unaffected by emotion when most of them, when pressed, will admit they’re just pissed off about an ugly divorce/custody battle/breakup/not being able to have sex with any woman on demand. Psst, guys, your emotion is showing.
@guantumscale
well, obviously the only emotions that let you remain logical/dont automatically invalidate your point are MAN!Anger and BONERRAGE
Shorter Tze Tze: Reading the sources that I provided and using factual information to show how wrong I am is misandry!
*flounce*
Whoa, this TzeTze dude is a certifiable diva. Indeed, why should we not be awed and humbled by his pretentious pseudo-shakespearean bullshit?? Have we grown so coarse in the militant bosom of feminism that we fail to recognize how peppering woman-hating screeds with ere-longs and bid-you-farewells automatically renders them reasonable, tolerant and rational?
Incidentally, our tin-tongued friend, thanks for informing us that a short attention span and a tendency to attack one’s classmates are signs of innate intelligence, whereas the ability to sit still, tune out distractions and readily assimmilate academic material is a sign of innate stupidity. You blew me away. see, I had always thought the ability to learn was a major indicator of intelligence, but I guess that’s just because of my naturally feeble ladybrains.
Well, I was expecting him to whine a little bit longer before the flounce. It’s an interesting change of pace; I’ll give it a 4/10.
Hell, to sweeten the pot for these jokers, it also means every WOMAN would be paying child support to every child.
Oh right, every dollar a woman makes is one stolen from a man who should be doing the job. Silly me.
While teaching boys separately helps them achieve in English it disadvantages them in science and maths. I’d therefore say separate education for boys in things other than arts subjects is misandary.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8010834.stm
Others have pointed out issues with the underpinnings of this argument, but even if we accept the assertions as true, it’s still wrong. Per his logic, paying child support would be infringement on the autonomy of an abstract representation of the man’s body, not his actual body.
@Amused
That was pure poetry.
Let’s see if he sticks his flounce.
“Reading all the vitriol and hatred emanating from you people instead of detached and rational arguments I conclude that you are not really interested in an honest, factual debate.”
“You” people! You malodorous, shabby peasants who don’t deserve the right to vote! Look how democratically electing representatives has ruined our great republic!
Little fly, you are being mocked, not threatened. Get used to it with your fantasy of an oligarchic republic and the reversal of common suffrage.
So, TzeTze: I wouldn’t make a distinction between sexes in this regard. In the (reworked) voting scheme I envision it would depend strictly on individual merit – as verifiably demonstrated – for individuals to be enfranchised regardless of sex.
Who sets the criteria? On what basis are those people selected?
How, and why, are the seed crystals for your oligarchy selected.
Also, since you have a stated; absolute, antipathy to women voting, what is going to be the hurdle (or set of hurdles) women have to surmount to be fairly treated?
Quis costodiet ipsos custodes?
Related, what examples can you give to show this sort of “merit” based limitation to franchise will work? You are proposing a huge gedankenexperiment be perpetrated on the world. If you are wrong (as you certainly are) lots of real people are going to suffer in the pursuit of the unobtainable.
I would invite you to actually read my article about female suffrage destroying democracy.
Because I don’t actually make the claim that *all* women would destroy democracy. I’m well aware that there are exceptions.
Right, not All women are like that, just the one’s who don’t agree with you.
Tell me again about this voting scheme you have?
Again, please try to remove emotions and polemics from the equation for a moment and think *dispassionately* about these issues.
Like this example of your dispassion; such an example of pure reason it is.
Your problem son is that you think evidence of passion = lack of reason. I commend that you read Frederick Douglass on the 4th of July, for a disabusal of that moronic notion.
TzeTze:
Which has fuck all to do with bodily autonomy. That you conflate the two is part (a small one, to be sure) of the reason intelligent people discount the things you say. If so basic a disassociated set of principles evades your understanding, who can afford to trust you with complexities?
A woman has the right to unilaterally abort a child – even against the father’s wishes – citing ‘my body my choice’. A woman also has the right to carry a child to term and then give it up for adoption, again even against the father’s wishes. If she does decide to carry the child to term and raise it herself the father is then *forced* to pay child support.
Anyway you twist this it is still an absolutely injust arrangement. The woman has all the rights, the man all the responsibilities.
Bullshit.
He has one responsibility, to pay attention to where his sticks his dick, and be accountable to the results therefrom.
All the responsibilities would be the 3 a.m. feedings, the walking off of colic, changing the diapers, doing the laundry, bathing, weaning, teaching to walk, to talk, warming towels for the earaches, cleaning up the puke, and the accidents incidentatl to children who are learning to control their bowels and bladders.
It’s walking them to school, and packing the lunches, shopping for clothes, and sitting in the waiting room at the dentist when they are having a tooth repaired after they fall. It’s cleaning up the nail-polish that hits the floor when they play Jackson Pollack on their table. It’s teaching them how to safely play with matches; and that they can come to you for advice on things which are new: so they won’t try to climb the chimney without an adult nearby).
It’s showing them how to cross streets; and learning to let them. It’s giving guidance when they are straining to be more than they know how to be; it’s providing comfort when they fail. It’s standing up to teachers who want to bully them into something they aren’t, and standing up to them when they won’t do what they need to do to gain the tools they need; to be what they want.
It’s looking the other way as they figure out how to be little adults; it’s hiding the way you wince at how they are learning about the practical aspects of sex, and romance (after you give them the simple facts, and how to “do it”, and what to avoid). It’s struggling with the difficult issues of when to stop looking the other way.
And it’s letting them go when they are ready; and supporting them as they make their way.
That’s what all the responsibilities are.
It’s sure as fuck a lot more then some fraction of a paycheck. Again the sheer ignorance evident in your conflations is evidence of a less than stellar intellect; and a significant lack of understanding even simple things.
No one, with so much as a mustard grain’s worth of common sense would trust you with anything more complicated than a Chemex.
Did you just advocate for the labor theory of value, comrade?
I’m telling Ron Paul and you are so gonna get kicked out of Libertarian Club!
::twitches:: the fedoras … the fe … dooooooorrr … aaaassssss
TzeTze: Money is an abstraction of work which is done with your body.
No, it’s not (and you really don’t want to go in the direction of nebulous abstractions: please tell me you don’t teach logic/argumentation).
Money is a tool for keeping track of exchange. It’s useful where there isn’t a ledger of social obligation (as when I water my neighbor’s plants because she’s out of town for the weekend, or the barrista at the coffee shop decides to make a flyer and hang it up to tell the customers I have show, or any other such intangible exchange, and so later my neighbor brings me some tomatoes, and I may send more people to get coffee from the barrista; who makes some GREAT milk drinks with espresso).
One can trade time/labor for it, but it is no means “an abstraction of work which is done with the body”. It’s an abstraction of value.
Please tell me you don’t teach economics.
So, TzeTze: Reading all the vitriol and hatred emanating from you people instead of detached and rational arguments I conclude that you are not really interested in an honest, factual debate.
What a cop out. I have to say, I think you are a tool.
Because what I see is someone to inept to extract the (blatant) arguments being made, from the (understandable) turns of phrase which come of giving a shit.
You aren’t strong enough in your position to respond to direct questions, and instead engage in the appeal to emotion of accusing your interlocutors of not being “rational”, in the face of some strongly reasoned responses.
So, you can’t think, and you can’t face adversity; you sure as fuck are gonna end up on the bottom of the heap in an actual meritocracy.
Nowhere have I insulted you in the kind of manner that you all are trying to insult me with.
Both halves of this are wrong. You have said the people here are part of the reason for a pathologic dysfunction in society. That’s insulting.
No one here has made any such baseless, and sweeping, claim about you. They have attacked the merits of your arguments, and extrapolated some of the implications about your personality. You need a thicker skin if you are going to dish out that sort of stupid, because people who think will</i< toss it back in your face.
Esp. when you leave the pits of misogyny in which you, and your ilk, keep breeding these maggotty bits of stupidity.
I have been a lurker here for a while and could not resist commenting on this Tze Tze and his ridiculous call for gender seperation. I have read various comments from MGTOW men here and on other MRA blogs.
First of all, the call for gender separatism is nothing new.There was a radical feminist separatist movement in the 1970’s. However, at least they had a legitimate political stance given the climate of the era.
But these MGTOW Seperatists it just seems fr what I have lurked on their forum have been hurt by women either in the dating or by their so called abusive mothers.
Whether their so called hurt and abuse by women is real or exaggerated, this gives them absolutely no excuse to hate women like they do. I mean these dudes seem so filled with hurt and anger at half the population they lose all credibility IMO.
These MGTOW guys will not even allow women to post on their forum and are completely closed minded to any so called reasonable debate, it’s just fruitless.
These men calling for some type of gender separatism and who avoid women in public are just nuts and its not a political or sociological issue as they think. On their MGTOW forum all they seem to boast about is how “alpha” they are, and how they have dropped out of the dating game.
As a female who Generally identifies as a feminist I know I should not care about these paranoid dudes avoiding women and leaving the dating world but somehow pisses me off how way off base they are. I mean if these guys would realize feminists would also agree with them on how traditional gender roles hurt men just as much as women.
Anyway sorry for the rant but this is my first comment after lurking here for some time.Good website David, keep up the good work exposing the insanity of many of these MRA’s.
If you think a dehumanised instrument has more value than a woman that is valued for her sex appeal I’d say you have a great deal of pondering ahead of you still.
Being valued for what you contribute to the world is being treated as a person. Being valued solely for what you look like is being treated as a dehumanized instrument. And in real life very few women are out to steal your hypothetical money, so you can relax about that.
Are you pondering what I’m pondering, Axe Cop?
So far, Mr. Parasitical Insect seems to have kept to his flounce, and good riddance. Still, I’d like to bring up a question for everyone’s consideration, based on his Boy/Girl Learning Style BS:
For thousands (yes, that’s 1 followed by 3 zeros, not just 2) of years, formal education in most Western cultures was strictly limited to males only. Throughout that long history, student discipline was far, far more rigid than anything in education today (indeed, most of us Eeebil, morally-relative moderns would probably characterize it as extremely sadistic). Students – ALL BOYS, I remind you – had to not only sit still, shut up and listen to the teacher; they also had to memorize entire lengthy texts and recite them flawlessly upon command, with whippings if they made a mistake. And then continue to sit still and shut up when the next boy got called upon to recite.
For all that time immemorial, this kind of formal education, available ONLY to boys and men, continued pretty much unchallenged. And boys and men were, for most of that time, the ONLY people who ever got to own property, hold political office, run businesses, write books, teach other boys and men, and pretty much do anything at all besides have babies.
So here’s my burning question: if sitting still, shutting up and listening to the teacher is so unnatural for boys, how come they were the only ones allowed to even try it for upwards of two thousand years? How come enough of them managed to succeed at it to, you know, kinda take over Western Civ for about that long?
And how come, now that girls and women finally won the opportunity to compete in the last 50 years or so, their supposed superior ability to sit still, shut up and listen to the teacher is suddenly an Unfair Advantage over the poor, poor victimized boys and men?
(Tsetse Flyboy, I’ll just wait patiently here.)
I think so Brain, but if the plural of mouse is mice, shouldn’t the plural of spouse be spice?
I’ll still think of him as Tom of Finland.
I think so, Shaenon, but does it really matter if Bee is always stoned, or merely usually stoned?
http://youtu.be/lOG_UtLxh58