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.
“Why would anyone want to refuse in a sexy way? That sounds bizarre.”
I’ve done it, TMI time! The words “I want to fuck you but you have a meeting in four hours” have left my lips. Fuck being a responsible adult >.<
Footnote — a morning meeting, as in “fuck, I want to, but we should’ em gone to bed hours ago”
hellkell: That’s the DSM definition of consent. Argenti and I were using it playing with a chewtoy in a thread a little while ago.
Pecunium: what?
That seems like a really bizarre reading of the phrase, “consent is sexy,” (I guess that’s because I think of the phrase as meaning “stop fucking raping people!!!” rather than “consent makes people horny.”) but I think I can see where she’s coming from… it’s something I’ll have to think about, I guess.
I personally see it as a way too literal reading of the word sexy for an incredibly narrow view of the term.
I agree completely, hellkell… but people do read things way too literally sometimes, like when MRM morons take continual consent to mean “can I move my hand lower? can I move my hand lower? can I move my hand lower? can I move my hand lower?”
Auggz – sorry, I wasn’t clear.
Original dude complains that “US women fetishise consent”.
Article you quoted says getting consent is part of being a decent human being, and if that’s sexy, cool, but it’s not the essence of the matter. The essence is not committing rape.
My point was that original dude is complaining about this. He doesn’t want to be put to the bother of getting consent, and calls insistence on it (and, presumably, US women not fucking him if they don’t want to) “fetishising consent”.
If it helps, I don’t think the guy who wrote the article actually used the words “fetishizing consent”. Kittehs is correct: the thrust of his argument was that he thought American women were too hung up on consent and if they’d just respond favorably to being groped by strangers, they’d be freer.
@Hellkell, Auggz is using the DSM/mainstream psychiatric definition of “fetish”. Which is probably what Pecunium was trying to say, and indeed he probably will have said so by the time I hit “post”.
@Marinerachel, I think “pregnancy is no excuse” guy was blathering elsewhere about the slightly outdated meme abotu how women are stronger than me because childbirth, and he thinks that feminists are using that meme to justify their “misandry”. Also, there might be an element of “HDU abort my child just because you don’t want to carry it?”
But… but consent is awesome. It means that you’re not raping someone. Isn’t that a good thing?
Athywren: MRAs aren’t being literal, they’re being disingenuous. They know damn well what they’re doing.
I meant the DSM version of fetish: Sorry, was distracted and confused my subjects and objects. 🙂
*Women are stronger than MEN, is what I meant to say. Many women are also stronger than me, but that’s not really relevant.
@hellkell
I’d say they are purposely obtuse.
Argenti – okay, I hadn’t really thought of situations where someone has to be out of there/sleep, but I also wouldn’t personally frame “I’d love to but” as sexy. It read more to me like you’re supposed to bat your lashes at the person, or something. I’m going with a narrower idea of “sexy” here – something that’s meant to be a turn-on, which seems to contradict the “no” part.
sarah: I don’t think obtuse is something one can be on purpose. They are pretending (knowingly) to a lack of understanding, because it furthers their ends. Good has been very handily showing how they do this in the two threads he’s been blithering in lately.
emilygoddess – thanks for that info. Creepydude sounds like a certain pretend French troll.
Actually this all brings up a pet peeve: using “sexy” as meaning practically anything good, appealing, popular, whatever. Not everything’s related to sex, and it gets really tedious the way the word’s used.
Kitteh — ok, I got you now. Different definitions of sexy apparently!
“Argenti, 4 hours isn’t enough? Dayum… :p”
Of sleep? For me? Yes, just barely. For sexytimes AND sleep? Unfortunately no. We’d already been naked and sweaty for like 3 hours before the concept of actual sex even came up ^.^ (I date assholes and have excellent lovers, I don’t get it either)
Auggz – I think we’ve a few crossed wires, but not to worry! 😀
My turn to ask for clarification, ‘cos I’m not sure what you’re driving at.
…so uh, no, I guess we could’ em gone at it for more than four hours, which was your actual question!
And oh hell yes on that dayum!
/TMI
Ok, idfk what is with iOS 7’s autocorrect and contractions (pecunium, you having that issue?) but that should be “could’ve” not “could’ em”
“We’d already been naked and sweaty for like 3 hours before the concept of actual sex even came up ”
Sounds like a summer night here, when the suggestion of sex would be met with GOD NO IT’S TOO FUCKING HOT WHAT ARE YOU THINKING OF I DON’T EVEN
😉
I think that before going off about how icky fetishizing consent is it might have been wise to read the article that was being referred to.
auggz – assume the worst with MRAs, you’ll rarely be disappointed.
(Well, you will, but not that way, if you follow.)
Completely OT and I haven’t read any comments but I just wanted to check in and say that I aten’t ded, and I aten’t left MBZ. Hope you’re all OK and stuff.