Pity the poor Men’s Rights activists. The real civil rights movements that MRAs like to compare their, er, “struggle” to may have faced many obstacles that MRAs haven’t — from legal prohibitions on voting to fire bombings and assassinations — but at least they haven’t had a hard time explaining just what it was, and is, that they’re seeking redress for.
When Martin Luther King so famously dreamt of a world in which “my four little children will … not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” he was not only speaking eloquently; he was expressing an idea that was, well, pretty easy to understand.
And that’s where the trouble comes for the MRAs. It’s a bit harder to explain your alleged anti-oppression movement to the general public when the people on whose behalf you’re fighting aren’t actually, you know, oppressed. So is it any wonder that MRAs have such a hard time explaining themselves to the public?
I mean, all the Suffragettes had to put on their posters was “Votes for Women.” MRAs are stuck. Men already have votes. They already have civil rights. Heck, men already run most companies and hold most political offices and control most of the world’s wealth.
And so MRA propaganda tends to be muddled, a weird mixture of misogyny and special pleading and stuff that just doesn’t make any sort of sense no matter how you slice it. In earlier posts we’ve looked at baffling and/or offensive posters from A Voice for Men and associated sites, as well as at some of the awful graphics that sometimes make their appearance on Reddit.
Today, a quick stroll through the MRA underground on deviantART.
The graphic at the top of the post is from someone calling himself awesomeninja; for his propaganda work, he specializes in somewhat baffling text-based graphics in basic colors. Apparently he has convinced himself that “feminazis use child-bearing all the time to defend their sexist views,” and feels it is necessary to respond to this in giant letters in several colors with a black background.
He is also responsible for this similarly befuddling contribution to political art:
Wait, is this a trick question?
Dude, have you actually met any Men’s Rights Activists?
Oh, wait, you are one. Oops.
But wait, there’s more:
Of course, awesomeninja isn’t the only one spreading the MRA message of love on deviantART. Here are a few other graphics I found by searching for “men’s rights” and related tags on the site.
This lovely “stamp” from loqutor, who has convinced himself he is “debunking an ages-old feminist myth” with it.
A meme from Userbruiser, who apparently thinks that if a woman has alcohol in her system, it’s ok to rape her:
This bizarre castration fantasy from the same lovely fellow:
This rant posted by themodsquad, who also enjoys jokes about pedophilia and bestiality.
There’s some question about whether or not themodsquad came up with that all by himself, but this uglier and worse-written sequel seems pretty authentic to me:
Is he a “real” MRA or just a troll? I don’t know, but he does seem to be an authentic misogynistic asshole attention-seeker, and I’ve seen virtually every “argument” in the first graphic rehashed many times on assorted MRA sites; it’s pretty much standard-issue “we hunted the mammoth to feed you.”
Let’s close with several graphics from an aspiring Man Going His Own Way. millenia89 is proud of his own reproductive organs:
But he doesn’t seem to think too highly of most of his fellow male-identified penis-havers. Indeed, he believes most of his fellow men are like lemmings marching off a cliff — except for a tiny percentage of MGTOW like the two tiny fellows at the bottom right of the graphic below.
I know it seems confusing, but trust me, the MGTOW in this picture aren’t the ones going over the cliff, really. They’re the ones facing the other direction, underneath that little MGTOW sign. No, not under the big MGTOW sign, under the little one. Just trust me on this one.
millenia89 is especially unimpressed with men who step in to “save a hoe,” like this fellow, whom he sees as a handy “personification” of the sort of “manipulated tool” who, I guess, apparently likes women enough to help them out. I’m not quite sure I get it. Apparently this picture is inherently hilarious because it’s a picture of a black guy with an odd smile in a weirdly inaccurate superman costume. Heck, even the font is wacky.
Millenia89 may not think much of most of his fellow men, but at least he doesn’t want to render them obsolete. Women, well, that’s another issue entirely, as this utopian paean to the glories of artificial wombs suggests:
So awesomeninja thinks that “pregnancy is no excuse for misandry.” Millenia89 evidently hopes that in the future there will be no excuse for pregnancy itself.
This is how the Men’s Rights movement tries to explain itself to the world.
And MRAs wonder why their little movement has the reputation it does.
—
I was inspired to check out deviantART’s MRA community by some of the commenters here. Check out the comments in the “Feminist anti-obedience school” thread starting here to see some homegrown parodies of awesomeninja’s graphic works.
ROFLMAO!
OMFG. That is perfect.
Would that make Roosh’s blog… Fuck Tales?
I’M SORRY I’M SO SORRY
I am laughing right now. Oh gods.
Roosh won’t be happy until everyone else hates themselves as much as he does.
Never underestimate the weirdness of trolls! But yeah, presumably it’s the same dropkick.
Scrooge McFuck … Fuck Tales …
::dies::
I am schadenfreude is gratified to know that just being happy (and especially, being a woman and being happy) is helping to keep him miserable.
Suffer in yer jocks, McFuck.
“And not even the fun kind of sadist either. ”
Nawh, there’s no such thing. This masochist has the best time when the person causing my bruises is doing it because I’m enjoying it, not because they like inflicting pain for pain’s sake.
Ever since readng about BDSM here I’ve wondered about how sadism ties in with it. I’ve heard the term ethical sadist, but (and I’m asking for corrections here!) I’d always thought the core of sadism was enjoying the other person’s distress, rather than the simple infliction of pain. It always seemed to me that a sadist wouldn’t really get any pleasure from inflicting physical pain on a masochist. Is that a popular notion that’s too broad, or reasonably accurate, or what?
(BTW thank you Argenti for giving me an opening to ask something I haven’t nerved myself to before.) 🙂
Alas, I can’t really answer Kittehs’s question, since I’m not that knowledgeable about pain play, but I PRESUME that some people only enjoy inflicting pain on someone they know is into it. Just like there are people who only enjoy doing other sexual activities with a consenting partner.
Like, obviously there are unscrupulous sadist who just like making people miserable. (Like Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors!) But with all the human variety in the world, I’m positive that some people only enjoy inflicting pain they know the other person likes.
That’s sort of like what Argenti described, isn’t it – someone enjoying inflicting pain when they know the other person likes it. I wouldn’t have thought that was sadism, and I don’t know if that’s where ethical sadism (now that’s a mind-boggling idea in itself) comes in.
Yes, that’s what I meant — you know those little noises of “yes, more please” during sexytimes? Same concept, but making me make them tends to leave bruises.
I would think that “ethical sadist” is either a term for such people, when they want to sound all I. Am. Dommy. Dom. Or like ethical pedophiles — they don’t fucking act on their desires.
artificial wombs sound like an incredible idea to me, pregnancy/childbirth is TERRIFYING