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.
Wow, I remember this post! And wow, yet another boring troll necro’d it! WHOOT!
That sounds like a booby prize.
I mean, Troll of the Year is ALREADY a booby prize, but that’s like, the booby of all booby prizes.
…Boobzy prize?
LBT – Which troll is the least Boobzy of all?
“Which troll didn’t put you to sleep this year?”
None of them so far.
(Does it count if GGG gave a few people nightmares?)
Don’t think so.
Hmm, maybe we need a poll for “What’s your favourite troll-inspired Pierre?” 😉
I wear my favorite trolls on my sleeve, I suppose.
And a fine flannel sleeve it is. 🙂
Orion… entertained me? I guess?
*spreads hands*
GGG entertained me for a while, and then the creepiness got to be too much.
The best troll of the year was Pell. I don’t see how this can be controversial. He was hilarious. He made shit up and it was always stupid and ridiculous and obviously wrong and over the top. It was like a mashup of DKM’s bizarre stories about his own life, NWO’s constant wrongness, and MRAL’s bad socking, with an added layer of narcissistic showoff.
I think there should be a special prize for trolls who carry on both sides of the conversation that is happening inside their heads and transcribe it into comment threads.
Why Do Some Of Our Trolls Capitalize Feminism And Feminists All The Time? Is It Because Capital Letters Are Fun?
Pell gets my vote for most entertaining, though I pity his classmates and parents.
Viscaria – and Men, of course. They have to capitalise Men. Or Just random words Because They can.
Got to agree that Pell, even in these sad days when he’s not the troll he was, is the best of the lot.
Worst of the worst? Have it be the “winners” from the previous competitions?
There should be a prize for the Most Unexpected Visitor. That could be Mark Minter’s ex or Bill Price’s wife. They aren’t trolls, of course, but the way each of them suddenly dropped in sure livened things up.
Obsidian Files gets high troll marks for sheer volume of text, and bonus points for being such a pain all over the Internet that he’s been booted from WordPress.
Pell is too predictable, and his inability to move on has moved him into the same “severe boundary issues” category as Mr Al, IMO.
Sunshine Mary’s occasional visits, coupled with her tendency to complain on her own blog about what happens here, could make her a solid contender.
Good definitely has this in spades. He’s an expert goalpost choreographer, too.
Wait, that’s a thing that can happen?
I did a google search for “Obsidian Files” to make sure I was thinking of the right person. The top results are several articles about how he got banned, and his wordpress blog no longer exists.
LOL
Good riddance.
Wow. Now I’ma have to look up Obsidian Files and see just HOW dude got banned.
RE: katz
Yeah, I dunno, Pell just never impressed me. He lacks the diligence and crackery of, say, Tom Martin. He just inspires annoyance in me, rather than awe and horror.
Wow, banned for stalking. That’s not creepy at all.
And of course, the Frozen Peaches brigade immediately popped up to say how he’d been wronged. Dude, don’t chase people all over the Internet! That’s basic decency! WTF.
And of course, feminism is to blame.
It’s nice to know that it’s possible to get banned from WordPress, since they maintain that GGG’s blog full of murder threats is fine and anyone who doesn’t like it should just write a blog post responding to him.
Damn, that guy was boring, even by troll standards.
GGG otoh should be banned for his own good. I feel like someone should make a program that responds to everything he posts anywhere with FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD PLEASE GET SOME DAMN THERAPY.
RE: auggziliary
Nah, you’re thinking orion, my self-proclaimed “gay porn muse.” ObsidianFiles was always very civil to me… he just proclaimed HORRIBLE THINGS. (Which in some ways made it worse.)
RE: katz
Yeah. Actually, one of the reasons I hang around MBZ so much is that here, being a dick really isn’t tolerated. Everywhere else I’ve been on the Net, huge acts of douchebaggery are just ignored or left alone because… well, everyone’s overworked and underpaid. This is the only place I’ve ever been where a complaint actually DOES anything. (I’ve managed to get things done twice before, but one involved frothing rage at a mod before they finally did anything, and the second, they got rid of the douchebag, but asked after a couple weeks whether I was okay with him coming back because he hadn’t said anything douchebaggy in those two weeks.)