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.
Socialkenny: huh?
No such thing as misandry, Kenny. Try again.
Plus I honestly think no one should be taking these MRM seriously despite the rhetoric. I don’t even think they take themselves serious.
Good gravy, I wish they didn’t. I wish they were just a bunch of Poes. I wish they didn’t really hate women.
You haven’t looked too closely at them, have you? They have links to how-to terrorist pages (Thomas Ball). They praise men who specifically target women for rape and murder (Lepine, Sodini). They doxx women and encourage harassment and worse. Sure, they can’t even organise a meeting, but they are promoting violence and intimidation of women for daring to be less than subservient. They’re very mock-worthy for their stupidity, but that doesn’t mean some of them at least are not actually dangerous.
It’s also very easy for you as a heterosexual man to say they shouldn’t be taken seriously. You’re not in the demographic they target, and you’ve presumably never lived with the daily background – or foreground – awareness and fear of rape and male violence against you simply for existing. The MRM are practising a more obvious version of the threat leveled at women every day.
Elam and his coworkers might show some misogyny sometimes, but that’s for them to deal with in their own community. MRAs call out MRAs, feminists shouldn’t call out MRAs. Feminists should be dealing with misandry in their own communities while MRAs deal with their misogyny.
Drive-by troll?
Everyone should call out bigotry where they see it, and misandry don’t real. Also, pretty much most of the literature since the end of the 2nd wave deals with feminists internally becoming more intersectional and inclusive… Where MRAs revel in their misogyny like swine in a shithole – you might think that’s a metaphor, but it’s not.
I’ll call out whoever the fuck I want if they’re being bigoted, thank you very much.
{People in the out-group shouldn’t be diagnosing the in-group’s faults. That’s for them to do. Elam should deal with his culture’s misogyny, and the feminists should separately but equally deal with their misandry.
Ally S, you can make yourself look like an presumptive idiot, then.
Uh huh, and the BNP should deal with the racism in their community, and cats should deal with the bird-murdering tendencies in their community, and any number of other moronic ideas.
For the record, feminists actually do deal with the ridiculously slight amount of “misandry” in our numbers… but for the MRM to deal with the misogyny in their ranks would imply that they don’t revel in it.
“People in the out-group shouldn’t be diagnosing the in-group’s faults.”
It’s fun to make up rules out of thin air.
It’s fun to make up rules out of thin air.
All morals were made out of thin air.
“Ally S, you can make yourself look like an presumptive idiot, then.”
I don’t give a shit what MRAs think about me when I criticize them, sorry. I’m not being presumptive by pointing out their fucked up beliefs.
“All morals were made out of thin air.”
Ok. So why are you stating that rule as though it’s one that everyone should follow?
See, the major difference between criticising misogyny in the MRM, and criticising misandry in feminism, is that the MRM is entirely built around misogyny, while feminism doesn’t even has misandrist foundations.
“Ok. So why are you stating that rule as though it’s one that everyone should follow?”
Because it’s the logical conclusion, as anyone with a brain can see.
What logical conclusion? Why are you being so damn weird?
Wait, other logic aside, he just implied that the MRM shouldn’t comment on feminism. Which, really, would solve half their problems if they could manage to be pro-men’s rights without being anti-feminism.
But yeah, I vote drive-by. Also, Kenny, you made no sense, please rephrase.
Oh. Not a drive-by. Can’t quote. Goes straight to weird.
So, Steven, what’s your area of expertise?
That’s a fair point… the entire foundation of the MRM is “feminism is wrong and evil and naughty and smells of wee-wee!” So, maybe we should take him up on it, and get those ignorant morons to shut the fuck up.
Say, Lipschitz, would you have a problem with PoC calling out racism? Or are only whites allowed to say “That’s racist!”
Elam & co aren’t sometimes misogynistic, they always are. It’s their raison d’etre.
No kittehs, you don’t understand – only racists can call out racism. ‘Tis the logical conclusion, as anyone with a brain can see!
Racists should call out racists. Civil rights activists have no right to criticize racists.
Ninja’d. Should’ve refreshed.