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.
auggziliary – And don’t forget laws! De jure and de facto discrimination were perfectly okay in the 18th and 19th centuries!
You know Good is just going to come back with a bunch of links to articles in popular magazines that (upon careful reading) actually invalidate his point. Not that he really has a point, since he’s just JAQing off.
In so many words?
Exposure causes seeming normalcry, evil isn’t abberant but endemic to the world, oppression is easy if you can make those you oppress believe it should be, and the world isn’t perfectly balanced because the world if a fuzzy, fuzzy place.
Very few people set out with the intention of being mean, set out with the purpose of destruction or do “Bad things”, because most folk consider themselves perfectly allright. The romans kept slaves, “The sinews of an empire”, and didn’t often feel particularly bothered by the notion that corraling others up and using them for forced labou might not be the spirit of greatness while most early explorers of the Americas were perfectly happy to blithely slaughter, corral or murder “savages”, not out of any real malice, but just expendiency and easy and a thousand other good excuses at the time.
There was never a big throw down between one side and another side, on a perfectly flat field, where men with brawns and brains deafeted weak woman who are weak, and was thus decreed by Right of Combat to rule forevermore. That’s bullshit, and facetious thinking. What’s far, far more likely is just that what at first seems like reasonable ideas: “I will go hunt, you watch the camp”, becomes reasonable traditions like: “I always go hunt, right? You always watch the camp”, becomes simple descriptions of behaviour: “I go hunt, you watch the camp”, becomes just as easily, iron clad laws: “You cannot come hunt, you must watch the camp”.
The history of the world is filled with examples of woman and men doing great, amazing things, to such a degree that saying utterly that one is weaker than the other and must be submissive is… at best, a nebolous concept with dubious merit. individual women dressed up as knights or were out hunting, just as individual men lived in convents disguised as nuns or tended the home. Larger societal trends are never particularly absolute at the personal level, because the world is… fuzzy. But they are still trends.
“Sure, you can come hunt, but I expect you to find out you’re not very good at it because you’ve never done it before, then settle down and watch the camp”.
Also, as I wrote, very few people set out with the intent of evil. But people only know what they know at the time, and choices are never made in utter isolation but with context to consider. And if everyone around you says that women can’t study mathematics at the university, or women can’t go to war, or woman shouldn’t be taught to fight, or woman need to dress a certain way, or that its a man’s job to watch the world… well, how are you, you pillar of iron will and true strength, going to respond? You’ll say what everyone else says, because that’s tradition and “truth” and what “Everyone knows that…”.
The idea of “Patriarchy” is not, and has never been, a conscious conspiracy of grinning men around campfires coming up with clever ways of berating others. It was just, and is just, for the most part, an accident of events and of people who happen to profit from continuing trends.
“Oh, sure, we can let others go hunt, but we get the best meat this way… And we’ve all gotten really good at hunting together, so why bother causing a ruckus? They’ll watch the camp just fine, and I’ll bring my son out tomorrow so he can pick up a trick or too”
“Oh, sure, she said it was rape, but I know for a fact that some others sometimes drink, and why bother causing too much of a ruckus? Hell, if that was rape, I might have done the same thing, and that’s silly, because I’m a great guy. And anyway, my daughter needs to find a good man, so don’t you know someone who….”
“Oh, sure, you could study at university, MIss, but don’t you think you’d be much happier finding a nice invenstment banker husband? All the other little ladies have much more fun with their babies, you know! You’ll be terribly lonely, you wonderful gal. And besides, we’ve never had a female student before, I don’t think we have the facilities for it, your tampoons will clog up the algebra!”
“Oh, sure, you gals could join active frontline combat, but you’ve managed specialistist positions like communications really well so far! And it’s terribly dangerous out there, you know, wouldn’t want someone to get hurt, now would we? And, hey, it’s not like you can really keep up with the menfolk! YOu’re all just communications specialists and support personel, you don’t have the training…”
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a chain event of random happenstance and occasional misery and shortsighted failure and convenient fucking excuses.
I should get off. Someone let me know if and when the guy finds a point, mkay?
I actually think that the on-average-greater-physical-strength of men play a very important part TODAY in UPHOLDING patriarchy. Just look at the way men may “playfully” show women that they’re physically stronger and therefore capable of doing as they please with them by, say, carrying a woman around at a party despite her objections. That kind of behaviour is pretty common, and serves to show women that “hey, you’re living at our mercy”. Not to mention the constant nagging to women about how men may RAPE them, jump out from some dark alley or from behind some bushes and RAPE them, because men are STRONGER. And in order to come safely home late at night they need to bring a RELIABLE man with them who can PROTECT them from the EVIL men, but it’s all about men – men as a threat, men as necessary protection against the threat, because men are STRONGER.
And then we reinforce this statistical and testosteron-induced difference by teaching women that they mustn’t exercise in the wrong way (i e, in a way that builds actual muscle), because that’s unfeminine.
Fibinachi, your explanation is fabulous. Here is an imaginary cookie. (I don’t have any cookie dough, sorry.)
Tastes like fantasy, wonder and imagination. All sparkles, rainbows and dark elves, negative suns and royals on quests.
@fibinachi
I don’t think good will get it (willful ignorance and all that) but I do think you did a great explanation! 😀
Wait, Fibinachi, did I accidentally give you a ganja cookie? Oops.
… sorry, that was *really* whimsical and sickening. I’m overtired, I spent all day as a dark elf instructing 400 children in the virtues of being good knights. Including being honourable and wise, and very pointedly, to treat people on their actions, not their apperance.
Interesting side note: Young boys go “Haha! We’ll win this fight because we’re boys and they’ve got girls, and girls suck” and then sometimes they don’t (And or I cheat and sic the other elf at them, who is female).
Then they stop. A sword to the gut! A great cure of the short comings of thinking your opponent can’t be faster than you. Not what I recommend for normal instructive conversation.
But it is a little funny how in some groups, guys tend to monopolize the right to exert violence, because “They’re the biggest ones, and they’re supposed to fight! And I fight my big brother all the time, and and and he says boys are better fighters!”
Indeed.
Oh man, new favorite troll account! Two-dot ellipses, lists of grievances that are all things like “flowers and candy,” an entire account of lovingly drawn illustrations of his subconscious…
Haven’t read through the comments yet, so sorry if I’m being repetitive, but my first take on this was that, while I’ve given up on the hope of decent grammar (among oh so many other things), I’m really, really bothered by the fact that the blues don’t match on several of these poster-things. C’mon, eyedropper tool, dudes.
Good question.
“Wait… what? Victim blaming? What the flying fuck?”
I do not fucking know, but I said fuck a lot in response to that load of shit.
Dvärghundspossen:
Oh, sure, physical strength (and the threat of its use, ie, violence) certainly plays a strong role in maintaining aspects of the patriarchy. My point is that in modern society, if we had an egalitarian set-up in the first place, physical strength alone would probably not be enough to establish a patriarchy. In fact, I doubt that physical violence alone would be enough, in the modern era, to actually sustain a patriarchy. However, by definition, any aspect of the kyriarchy has access to numerous methods of support and power–everything from financial control to education and media is largely in the hands of the dominant group. So they only need physical threats on some occasions; in many cases, it’s easier to coerce or force submission via other means.
Rape prevention advice is simple really. If women just never left their homes and never interacted with anyone they wouldn’t get raped. Unless of course they live on the ground floor (I was honestly adviced against that), or live alone. However, as long as women don’t ever interact with anyone in person, or leave the house, or drink alcohol, or open the door or windows, or live on a ground floor, or share a house, or live alone, or have family, or live in a bad area, or live in a good area that is close to a bad area, or give someone their number, or let people online know they are female, or have a picture of themselves, or let someone see them through the window in a state of undress, or dress or act in a way that might seem attractive to someone who has broken in, or give the wrong impression about feeling lonely and trapped they are fine. I think MRA just get upset women aren’t prepared to do those small things to keep safe.
Oh, suuure, it sounds irrational when you actually come out and just say it. I mean, anything utterly unreasonable will sound odd if you’re open about it!
Now, ladies, we know it’s all our own fault for flaunting our vaginas.
^ and even writing that made me cringe at how it ignores the rape of vagina-less people.
“Pregnancy is no excuse for misandry”.
This is like saying short eustachian tubes are no excuse for burnt cookies. I agree, but what’s the point? One doesn’t really relate, tend to cause, or hinge on the other.
I need a gif of Wesley from princess bride saying to Andre the giant “I believe you….so what happens now?”
@ auggziliary “well you should just stop feeling bad for yourself and just get over it”.
still heard rather too frequently. IMHO, Bright-siding has led to a resurgence in associated stupidity.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a chain event of random happenstance and occasional misery and shortsighted failure and convenient fucking excuses.
And when this happens over a 3 million year period, it’s called evolution.
No, it’s called history.
@ Nitram I need a gif of Wesley from princess bride saying to Andre the giant “I believe you….so what happens now?”
will this do?
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4064/doublefacepalmrikerpica.jpg
I actually think that the on-average-greater-physical-strength of men play a very important part TODAY in UPHOLDING patriarchy. Just look at the way men may “playfully” show women that they’re physically stronger and therefore capable of doing as they please with them by, say, carrying a woman around at a party despite her objections. That kind of behaviour is pretty common, and serves to show women that “hey, you’re living at our mercy”.
Actually, I would say that this behavior serves to show women “hey, look at how much I can protect you. Look at how dominant I can be over other men, because I know that appeals to you”.
Also, the clear way that so many women have no inhibitions about aggressively confronting and striking men as well as how women are the bosses in most married or cohabitating households shows that women are in general not intimidated by men.