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.
I really wish that wasn’t true. I know too many people who buy into that trash that I kind of have to believe that they’re just idiots in order to deal with it, sometimes. Mind you, the fact that not a single one of them has done the basic research necessary to understand that “patriarchy” doesn’t mean “men are to blame” in the past year is breaking that down pretty quickly now.
Oh, and this will be the MRAs new beatstick, but it is fucking hilarious.
Ah.. THFF, the state of the weather which comes after, “Too Fucking Hot”, and means, Too Hot For Fucking.
::waves at thenatfantastic::
natfantastic: hello!
Pecunium – LOL! Good description, I must remember that ::thinks gloomily of the summer we’re likely to get::
Whoot, thenatfantastic’s back! How are you? How’s boyfantastic and babyfantastic and all?
1) March ~.^
2) there are these things called showers, what is this “too hot for fucking” of which you speak? (See, I’d say maybe at 110, but then you’re in the shower already…)
Hi nat!
LOL too bloody tired from the heat and a day at work cancels shower sex, for me!
Too hot for fucking in my part of TX is May through right about now, so god bless central air conditioning.
@thenatfantastic
Hi 😀
Hey guys!
Basically what happened is that I went away at the beginning of April and then had family come to stay immediately after so I got behind in threads and then it was summer and I had three months off so I went away to a few places (nothing exciting, visiting family and a couple of festivals) and then I got even FURTHER behind and long story short, I don’t like commenting until I’m fully caught up and I’m still stuck somewhere in June in the archives… but I missed actually speaking to people on here. Boyfantastic is fine Kittehs, we got our pet rats and they’re OSSOM… that’s pretty much all my new news. I have nothing to contribute about the weather because I live in a basement and rarely go out during the day since I work here. Apparently it was very sunny two days ago and very foggy today, but I only heard this third hand.
I was just talking to Boyfantastic about money actually and he joked that he’s a kept man because I’ve been paying for everything recently as he’s waiting on a couple of clients to pay him, but I said it was fine because we were single (double?) handedly proving the MRAs wrong. Then on the other hand, I undoubtedly* stole my jobs from hardworking manly men so I suppose I am still an awful lady-Hitler.
(*I didn’t. Honest.)
Argenti: For me… nighttime temps above 90F are getting there. Daytime temps of more than 105F. If one is camping the daytime temps are lower; unless one can get a breeze through the tent/make sure it’s in shade.
Showers are not (IMO) conducive to decent lovemaking.
Great to hear, thenat!
So, whaddya think of the troll quality in recent months? Gone downhill, I reckon. Tedious seems to be the theme with ’em this year. How we’re to have a Troll of the Year contest I don’t know.
Ratties! You have ratties! Pictures, plz?
You realise Boyfantastic being a Kept Man is misandry, right? I mean it must be. Undermining his macho manliness, or something. Though being kept by him would be misandry too, ‘cos everything is.
Oh hi thenatfantastic! I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m glad to see you’re back.
Random question: are you an anarchist? I think you said something like that a while ago, but I’m not sure.
Rattie pix! Here is Dorian when he wants something, and here is Orinoco being squished in his hammock by Dori. I have a bazillion more pictures but it’s 4.30am so you’ll have to make do with what I could find on my Twitter.
Don’t ask about the names, we got them from a hippie literature student. They are super adorbz, albeit very naughty. Noco is pretty much blind because he’s an albino so we’re having to learn a few new tricks to deal with him but it’s all coming along quite swimmingly, since he is the more intelligent of the two.
Some of the trolls are pretty funny, but only for about three posts. There’s definitely no stand out, except Pell unfortunately 🙁 I’m currently reading a thread where people were making up their own MRA stories about spermjacking and alphas. It’s much funnier than any troll ^_^
Hey Ally! Yes, I am one of the Boobz Bloc 😉 I followed you on Twitter a few days ago but I kind of rarely use Twitter now so haven’t had a chance to speak to you on there.
Oh dear – I completely forgot you followed me on Twitter. X_X I rarely go there these days.
Also, “Boobz Bloc” is great XD
I was talking to Black Bloc on there the other week, he was sticking up for me when I was getting loads of shit. A couple of weeks ago Boyfantastic and I were arrested for taking pictures of the police arresting someone else* (where they were kneeling on the dude’s neck) and I just got trolled for HOURS by people claiming that a) I must have done something wrong, just look at me, nobody gets arrested for just filming the police and b) well if the guy was arrested he’s clearly dangerous therefore it’s perfectly legit for a six foot tall heavyset cop to kneel on his neck! and I was just about ready to delete the whole damn thing until BB turned up in his shining red and black armour.
(*need I say it was a MoC?)
Haha wow that got spectacularly off-topic. Anyway it’s nearly five now and I’ve finished the work I stayed up to do so I’m off to go crash before the seagulls start! Nice seeing-ish everyone again 😀
Niters (morning, rather) thenat!
For when you get back: Orinoco and Dorian are adorbs! Is Orinoco all “comfy now” or “argh get off me” in the hammock?
That’s fucking horrible about the police. What came of it?
I know I should be in bed but after arresting us on three bullshit charges which would have been laughed out of any court (none of which we did, obviously) they de-arrested us and acted like they were doing us a massive favour just after they’d put the guy in the van – they clearly just wanted us out of the way for a bit. Full story here if you want to see what a huge pile of bullshit it was.
The rats’ favourite thing is to sleep on top of each other in a confined space (they’re currently in a box with Noco on top) so he’s definitely fine with it! I should show you a proper picture of him, he’s so lovely. He has curly hair and comes when we call him, as long as we tap or scratch to let him know where to come. Thankfully his blindness doesn’t seem to impede him too much, as long as we don’t move anything he’s memorised – there’s a series of boxes behind the sofa that he runs along and before we realised how bad it was we had removed one of them because we needed something from it and he kept falling in the hole 🙁 But it certainly doesn’t stop his naughtiness, just today he’s bitten a hole in a rug by attacking a phantom stain and tried to eat Boyfantastic’s slippers as he’s been wearing them!
Right, proper goodnight now! Hope you, Louis and the Furrinati are grand 🙂
Niters, sleep well! [hugs from us]
“Showers are not (IMO) conducive to decent lovemaking.”
I AM FISH! PUT ME IN WATER!
No seriously though, I wasn’t exactly thinking sex per se, but I AM CHEW TOY (and seeing how *that* is how we ended up at “fuck, you have a meeting”…yeah)
Also, hair! Cold water! Sexytimes aside, assuming it isn’t sticky humid, icy hair will keep the rest of you fairly comfy. I never dry mine in the summer (ok, I rarely dry it at all, straight in my backwards braid it goes [I think your way is backwards, but that’s neither here nor there])
Nat — what bullshit! The best friend got arrested for being on the sidewalk (obstructing passage or some shit) during the G20 in Pittsburgh. Had to do community service t get it expunged and law student, so yeah, had to do it.
Pecunium — speaking of whom, my mother took the news of my legal paperwork far better than expected, prolly cuz all I said was that I need to use the office copier so I can just feed it through (you’ll see a copy in the mail prolly next week)
I’m not trying to come off as holy in any way possible, especially being that I’m a PUA. But I know lots of guys who use pregnancy as a reason to roam in other words. Is this right? No. But it’s all too common (misandry in this sense) to expect a mindset shift over night.