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.
A good illustration of how neutral and even male-dominated situations are perceived as female-dominated (eg, how a group of half men and half women is perceived as being mostly women) because the base assumption is that there will be no women.
A vague reference to flawed DV research and a study that neither analyzes the nature of the respondents’ answers in the survey nor necessarily supports the conclusion that women are dominant in heterosexual couples? Ok.
Also, what’s deliciously ironic about those two links is that they are flawed for the same reason: they rely on the double-respondent model for responses, ignoring the effects of bias due to vague questions and biased perceptions of the respondents’ partners.
@Ally S
Well, I tried to find any research published by Capaldi in 2009, but unfortunately it looks like the article only mentioned a conference. She has published in 2012. I haven’t looked over the article pertaining to intimate partner violence.
Serrana:
“Do you think that people who were slaves at one time in history are evolutionarily inferior to their masters, too, Good? Because that’s what follows from your statement.”
YES, thank you!
Fibinachi:
Everything you just wrote, YES! So eloquent, so patient.
Good:
“Stop being stupid stupid.”
You stop being stupid, you big stupid head!
Gives no source. Cites author, tells us where she presented the source, doesn’t tell us what the source is. Plus her articles are behind a pay wall anyway, so it’s not like we can even spend the night trawling through every one of her articles published before 2009 in the hopes of stumbling across it.
Basically boils down to decorating choices and what movies you go to. Hardly demonstrative of “being the boss.”
1) It’s not universal.
2) Maybe tens of thousands of years. The MRA/evo-psych idea of a hunter-gatherer society is one which is referred to by anthropologists as an “agrarian” society. (That’s an ever-so-special form of hunter-gatherer society which involves staying put and growing your own crops rather than hunting… or gathering.)
1. If a person stands up for rights, whether it be for men, women, gays, minorities, or leprechauns, that shouldn’t be considered a negative thing unless you are trying to deny those rights.
2. Injustices that may have been done in the past–or even those that continue to occur–should not be used as an excuse for more injustice.
3. It is irrational to make up a term, “MRA” and to use the term to dismiss a person without addressing his or her argument.
Count me in with the people who have no idea what the “Pregnancy is no excuse for misandry” shit is supposed to actually mean. A pregnant woman looked at an MRA the wrong way AAAAH MISANDRY EXCLAMATION POINT EXCLAMATION POINT ELEVEN EXCLAMATION POINT? Or is there a subtle nuance there that my tiny feminist brain isn’t picking up?
Ugh, tedious troll is tedious. Playing the devil’s advocate on the Internet is frequently a sign of extreme entitlement and boredom. “U mad?” is the catchphrase of jackasses with no personal investment in a serious matter they choose to throw their worthless two cents in. A sure sign of unchecked privilege, if you will. /rant
Here’s a little tip, Good: trying to justify the current, unfair social situation with vague biotruth theories based on nothing but one ad hoc hypothesis after another does not science make. To echo Fibinachi: even if it did, what the hell does that have to do with anything? “Welp, shitty things have been done in the past. Therefore, I’m completely justified in carrying on the proud tradition of doing shitty things myself. Checkmate, feminists!”
@auggziliary
My favorites are the one with the brown spotch over its eye and the one with the wide open mouth that looks like it’s raging XD
LOL at Good not understanding evolution.
And re: the carrying around someone against their will is showing you can “protect” them…
No. No no no. Even if you /wanted/ to carry out a horrible system like this, what you’d do is carry /other people/ around against their will and offer them to your sweetie.
Which is still awful, I’m just saying how does messing with someone show you can protect them?
Did Good get blocked or did he look up what a naturalistic fallacy is and realize he’s just simply wrong about everything?
Eh, who cares? I have pizza.
Who can destroy a thing, controls a thing. Who controls a thing can protect that thing! And don’t worry your little head about the whole destroying a thing thing, ok?
Anyone have a link to that study that found that when women speak even close to half of the time in mixed-gender groups they’re perceived as dominating the conversation? Because that’s what this reminds me of. Hmm, why do we think that a little less than half of households having women running the show would seem like too much to our resident sexist dumbass?
You have pizza? Why don’t I have pizza? MISANDRY! MRA brothers! I have seen the beast and it is evil! Let me join with you!
Oh, wait… maybe I should just make something to eat myself?
I think it’s clear that carrying someone’s body against their will as a display of dominance does not in any way convey the message “I’m protecting you!” At best it conveys the message “I’m protecting you because you’re weak, ineffectual, and naive.”
I will sign up for this only on the condition that I get to be one of the demons, and dress up like Elizabeth Hurley in Bedazzled.
Fibinachi… all awe is yours.
Hi. Archaeologist/anthropologist here. I teach this stuff, so I thought I’d jump in with some dates for you all. I can give you citations when I get into school tomorrow, so just let me know what you want. Most of these dates are in Wikipedia – I checked the article on human evolution just now.
Earliest ancestors show up around 4-6 mya Ardapithecus ramidus is the better documented.
2.5 mya we have Homo habilis and Australopithecis garrhi – both tool users, we believe.
1.8mya is when Homo erectus appears (I’m a joiner, not a splitter).
Archaic Homo sapiens appears around 400,000 ya, but he/she’s not quite us.
Anatomically modern man or Homo sapiens sapiens is dated back to only around 200,000 years ago.
All of these folks were food foragers, or hunters & gatherers, and were egalitarian so far as we know, based on observations of modern hunting/gathering groups, women supply about 70% of household resources in the form of plant, insect, and miscellaneous foods, and men supply about 30% in the form of animals hunted. This was the the case until about 10,000 years ago, when women invented horticulture, the cultivation of plants with hand tools. It is not until a few thousand years later that we get agriculture and women lose control of food production. This is where patriarchy first rears it’s ugly head.
I hope this helps clarify things. Now, I have to let my dogs out and get them some fresh water. I apologize for any typos-I’m doing this on my tablet and the keyboard is really teeny. I’ll check back tomorrow if there are any questions, comments or shrieks of outrage. (^_^)
@Cassandra says
this?
Normally David announces if someone has been blocked or moderated.
@ Fade
It was the classroom study mentioned there I was thinking of. Also, re the earlier conversation about gender, this was one of the things related to social construction of gender roles that pissed me off most as a child, and it’s an example of one of the cases where people’s ideas about gender and how it works – women are really talkative! – clashes with societal models of appropriate behavior for women and girls – they shouldn’t talk so much, that means they’re nagging or dominating men and that’s not acceptable!
Wait, you need a philosophy, a plan of attack to go shopping?
This guy sounds like soooooooooo much fun. I’m a guy and I would love to spend the weekend with him:
Me: “Hey-I’m about to check my local sci-fi bookstore to see if they have any new Doctor Who stuff. Want to come along?”
MRA: “What-right now? We need a philosophy first-need a set plan of the shop, exactly where the books you are looking for may be, a set path that would minimise any possible distractions, and have you focus on what you’d like, but most of all a philosophy. What are you going to look for?”
Me: “Oh, I don’t know. I was just going to see what’s new and-”
MRA: Not good enough. We will now go online, see what may be new and then add those points to the plan of the shop!”
Capaldi did publish an article in 2009; here’s the abstract:
The non-official data came from self-reported surveys and observation (while the couple engaged in problem-solving behavior).
Citation: Violence Vict. 2009; 24(4): 502–519.
In an update on that “do women talk more than men” issue,
Link: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5834/82.short
Thanks, Bonelady!
Goddamn, why do MRAs suck so bad at science?