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.
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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.
Wow, I just read ALL the comments to this post. In particular, I would like to salute Chie Satonaka for this, to which Good apparently did not have the balls or brains to respond:
Yes. ^^This. Exactly this.
Also, if you find yourself in the subordinate, being-socially-shat-upon position, getting out of that position is not as easy as saying “I will not accept this”. Sometimes saying that just gets you ignored, sometimes it gets you killed.
Cool video! 😀 No sound at work, so I didnt get the voice. Love those pigtails, though I really wanted to see more of the long hair (wig?) on the person in the greeny-yellow trousers.
I don’t like being boss, either. It’s been years since I had to do team-leader stuff, and the only good thing about that was that if we had enough staff on (a rarity) I could lurk in the office instead of having to be out in the galleries.
One of the things I was worried about when I went from thinking of Louis and me being lovers/courting or whatever was that his attitude to marriage might have something of his earthly days still in it, and that was a frightening thought. He’s never been a dominant or domineering sort of person naturally, but his role and the general attitudes then gave him a hell of a lot of power over his first wife, even if it tended to play out politically rather than personally. Even in our situation, where he can hardly affect my earthly behaviour – certainly not force anything – it worried me. As it happened he had, of course, long since moved on from those attitudes (duh to me for thinking otherwise, but this was about six years ago and I didn’t know him as well then), and he’d been thinking of us as married for several months already, by the time I got to that place. (Convenient, really: we have two marriage and one weddingish anniversaries!)
Yep. That’s oppression.
I just read through the whole thread, and I’m still wondering who craves cereal after sex. I thought the traditional after-intercourse ritual was having a cigarette, not a bowl of Lucky Charms.
I bet Mr Waaah-she-won’t-feed-me has never had sex twice with the same person, too.
I’m like 99% sure Good isn’t arguing in good faith, but this is a pet peeve of mine:
Evolution isn’t necessarily good. Contrary to popular belief, evolution isn’t magically making species “better” by some objective standard. Better suited to their specific environments, maybe, but not always. Something like 90% of the species that have ever existed are extinct now. Evolution’s success rate is abysmal.
So even if we ignore all the very good answers to your question about the origin of patriarchy, Good, and decide that it was evolution after all: so fucking what? Especially when we’re talking about humans, who are capable of reasoning and of choosing not to act on our baser instincts. So fucking what if it did evolve that way?
High five for extra anniversaries, Kittehs! Dr. Husbutt and I got married/wedding’d/whatever’d twice (once for legality and once for friends & family) and are coming up on our second first-year anniversary in a bit less than two weeks 😀
@kittehs
Sadly, not me 🙁 I want kitties but just don’t have a job to pay for them at the moment.
@ kittehs
Isn’t he pretty as a girl? Pretty as a man too…the kid in the yellow pants is definitely wearing a wig, as is the guy with the braids and the sparkly eyeliner.
Craving cereal after sex – maybe they just woke up and it’s time for breakfast? Otherwise I’m confused too.
All I can say is, Sir must be just heroic, ‘cos he’s perfectly capable of walking downstairs (!!!) and cooking breakfast (!!!!!!!) after sex.
Maybe it’s in the category of “you have to do these things when you’re a king”.
Wait, really? I thought oppression was when you couldn’t get laid whenever you wanted, regardless of what everyone else involved wanted?
Oh, wait, right… I forgot! Clearly, the MRAs aren’t getting through to me. I guess I’d better go see what kind of cereal they like.
Athywren – totally. I was surprised that poster about having an erection =/= wanting sex (it was an MRA one, right?) didn’t say something like him having an erection = she caused it and owes him.
True oppression is when random women won’t give you sandwiches and blowjobs on demand. Everything else is just whining.
Also, did anyone else snicker over the fact that the person who made the “proud to be a hetero white male” poster calls himself “awesomeninja”?
@CassandraSays
The name is so unashamedly childish dudebro that… I just rolled my eyes and kept scrolling.
True oppression is only what men say it is, because everyone else is just too illogical, irrational, and unambitious.
Dr. Husbutt would like a shiny medal (or possibly cookies?) for the fact that he often gets up and gets me something to drink after sexytimes, whereas I generally role over and fall asleep.
SittieKitty – what white men say, with the very occasional comment allowed by MoC, if it’s complaining about women.
What, Dr Husbutt doesn’t want cereal? How unexpected.
Well, the blockquote monster got me, but in a way I never expected. Top paragraph is the quote, the second and third paragraphs are my actual comment. Blee!
dustydeste – how about cookie medals?
Someone feed that blockquote monster some cereal, it’s ravenous today!