I sometimes say that the only “activism” that the Men’s Rights Movement is any good at is harassing individual women. But perhaps I’m being a bit too stingy here: following on the heels of the Father’s Rights activists who dress up like superheroes and climb up buildings and bridges to show that, well, I’m not sure what they’re trying to show, Men’s Rightsers seem to be developing a knack for poorly conceived media stunts that make them look like idiots.
The latest incredibly poorly conceived Men’s Rights media stunt come from Men’s Rights Edmonton, the A Voice for Men sister brother group famous for, among other things, chasing women down the street in the middle of the night and claiming that the women they chased were the bullies.
Anyway, the loudest and most obnoxious dude in the group, Nick Reading (a.k.a. “Eric Duckman”) has decided to run for Edmonton City Council on — get this! — the Patriarchy Party ticket! Oh no he didn’t!
Oh, yes he did. I suppose that the Patriarchy Party’s supposed platform — including a pledge “to end antiquated laws regarding women’s sexual consent” and provisions to instruct teachers “to snatch things like toy trucks out of the hands of little girls and replace them with dolls or tea sets” — probably inspired a chuckle or two amongst the folks at A Voice for Men, but the trollery here is really too inane to offend.
Whetever, dudes. You can find their badly designed pamphlet, with traced-photo “artwork” presumably by the noted FeMRA artist TyphonBlue, here.
Kittehs, I’m wondering idly if you’d like Persian food. It’s seasoned, but not spicy. I think you’ve been to LA before (am I imagining that?), so wondering if you tried Persian or any middle Eastern food.
Sorry, I overreacted. But I think I could go quite happily for the rest of my life without ever hearing anyone joke about someone’s wife’s bad cooking again, regardless of her actual ability.
See, the joke has a lot to do with the fact that the “position” of the “patriarchy party” isn’t anybody’s real position. It’s the straw-man position that people are constantly accusing MRAs of supporting. Of course it appears ridiculous. It’s a gross over-simplification perpetuated by people too lazy to bother finding out the truth.
I used to share an apartment with a guy who had been sexually abused by multiple different adults as a child. He liked to pop the blades out of disposable razors and cut his torso. We tried to get him some help. I was very much surprised to discover the complete lack of resources available to help this individual. I guess for most of you, people like this just don’t exist. After all, MRAs don’t have any real issues, right? They’re just woman-haters.
MRE =Meal, Ready to Eat. they replaced C-Rations in 1984. I started eating them in 1993, when they were in the second generation (all the freeze-dried meats had been replaced with shelf-stable dishes, but the freeze-dried fruit in heavy syrup was still to be found).
The Third Generation had a heater in every meal: a few grams of casutic lye in a structured formin a plastic sleeve (very handy for making, “MRE bombs”). The freeze dried fruit was gone.
Fourth Generation had more meals, and did away with some of the proprietary desserts in favor of contracted ones (M&Ms, Skittles, Jolly Ranchers).
All in all they aren’t that bad; once in a while. I still have about two dozen for emergency rations. A number of “survival” firms have manufactured things they market as, “MREs” but they aren’t.
They are better than Ukranian field rations, about par with English, and inferior to Greek; though only the Brits come close in terms of variety. On the other hand, eating an MRE cold isn’t too bad; and eating a Compo (British Ration) cold is masochistic in the extreme.
I think they just slap the Posterize filter on them. Look, I can do it too!
Actually, I think TyphonBlue runs pics through filters, and then traces over them and fiddles with them. So it’s not just filters. But it’s not exactly great original art. And sometimes it’s so lazy it doesn’t look like she did anything more than run it through a filter.
Naturally, I lazily run pics through the “ink sketch” and “pencil sketch” filters on Paint.net (as well as similar photoshop filters) all the time for my man boobz graphics, but I don’t actually pretend to be an artist when I’m doing that.
I know EXACTLY what photoshop filter was used. It was “cutout.” She took a photo, drew some lines on it, clicked cutout. Yeah. That’s it.
Cloudiah, I think if you set up a “racist party” specifically mentioning you will bring back Jim crow you wouldn’t do well.
If you set up a party with another name that looked at ensuring people use and can only use services in their close locality (i.e segregation but don’t call it that) you’d do well. Similarly with other coded racial policies like being tougher on minor crime or drugs (although these policies are only racist because people know the police won’t apply the law equally to white people)
Even in the South are adverse to being racist by name.
God this is depressing.
Wow. In the pamphlet he says he will “divert sorely misplaced millions of dollars away from women’s shelters…”
I’m not really seeing the joke, since I just started reading Molly Dragiewicz’s book “Equality with a Vengeance” about a MRA group in the States who tried to use an Equal Protection claim to say that funding shelters for women was discriminatory towards men. They didn’t prevail in their lawsuit, but they sure tried.
Crazy of us feminists to think they’d want to close down women’s shelters.
Yes, I’ve been to LA a coupla times, and no, I’ve never tried Persian food. I was under the impression Middle Eastern food would be pretty hot, at least to my palate, which is a pity, because some of the dishes sound very appealing.
Hmm, there’s a Persian restaurant not too far from where I’m going to be on Monday …
So they decided that the mrm wasn’t enough of a laughingstock already, and they needed to step it up a few notches?
They’re obviously trying to be controversial and edgy to get attention, but that doesn’t work if the attention just makes them look like a bunch of clowns. The Westboro Baptist Church is great at doing controversial things to get attention, but everybody hates them.
Despite the saying, there really is such a thing as bad publicity.
@Magnus spem
“I used to share an apartment with a guy who had been sexually abused by multiple different adults as a child. He liked to pop the blades out of disposable razors and cut his torso. We tried to get him some help. I was very much surprised to discover the complete lack of resources available to help this individual. I guess for most of you, people like this just don’t exist. After all, MRAs don’t have any real issues, right? They’re just woman-haters.”
Why should they care?
Just look at the number of homeless men compared to women,men are disposable in this so called patriachal society
I did it to a pic of mine in Photoshop just now and OH GAWD…I’m an MRA avatar…*shudders and deletes*
I think she should push the filter even further until the MRA in question looks like a cubist painting.
Also AVfM snuck into the girl’s clubhouse…errr…secret feminist meetup. Apparently there was doxxing according to this thread in AMR
http://www.reddit.com/r/againstmensrights/comments/1n7r8q/avfm_and_rmensrights_publish_recordings_of/
The thread in question:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1n6kce/secret_toronto_feminist_meeting_23rd_september/
Do you all ever just see this and think “nope. I’m done with this gender war crap”
I used to find MRAs scary. Now I just roll my eyes. Even when they pull creepy shit like this. I’m just so tired. If this is the future of gender issues, I want no part of it. Its just so stupid and I feel so burnt out. I don’t know if it’s just internet feminism, but the back and forth between MRAs and internet feminists is just…I dont know. This all feels like some ridiculous reality show and its upsetting because there are legitimate issues that all genders face and it’s just exploded into this. Does anyone else feel the same way? 🙁
Lol…well I know David knows about it since I’m reading another thread about it in AMR. I’m behind. Time for bed, methinks.
Greater Good and Magnus — guys, there just aren’t many resources for specific psych issues. Magnus, if you still know the guy in question, direct him to the Bodies Under Seige board, I used to be a mod over there, psych sucks when it comes to self-injury, they rock (non-judgemental but in no way pro-SI, also, random distractions and word games and such)
Trauma groups in general do exist, though I imagine they’re more focused on military type trauma than sexual. Sorry, I don’t know any good resources in that regard.
Greater Good — oh fuck off. No one here has ever, EVER, suggested we don’t care. He’ll, we’ve dug up resources for our trolls before.
…whatever happened to AntZ anyways? Anybody know if he took advantage of said resources? Or just divided down the Mississippi?
I’m pretty sure that Greater Good is one of us being a Poe, just FYI.
(Zie first appeared in a thread where we were all mocking Good and asking for a better one.)
Argenti, yeah, I was briefly managing editor for an attempt to get a trauma resource set up. There was next to nothing outside of military which existed. Canadian Armed Forces was quite open to helping, but there were legal roadblocks and the money from the backers ran out before it got anywhere.
I thought Greatest Good was the poe?
@Magnus Spem
I’m sorry you don’t live in a country with universal mental healthcare provision. Here in the UK (and in almost all Western European countries), he would have had access to therapy and medication for life. My family, several of whom are psychiatrists, have dealt with terrible cases of self-harm, of both genders, as part of their job. However, if you think things like putting up posters which encourage the attitude that women can’t be raped if they’re drunk, or writing rants on the internet about how all women are evil, actually help men, then you obviously don’t have a good perception of what MRAs actually spend their time doing. No-one thinks that men have no problems (whatever that may mean). But MRAs are about the least likely of any group in the world to solve them.
There’s a Greatest Good too? Now I’m confused.
So, they draw a giant Ppenis on a pamphlet because that’ll show them mean girls – and yet still manage to take themselves seriously…
(sorry for not reading all the comments, I’m too excited to be here to be patient!)
Cassanda — We have (Not So) Good, Greater Good who tends to show up right after Good eats crow, and Greatest Good who’s a delurker who came when we joked that one of us should take the nym.
lightcastle — that sucks, there really should be trauma groups for non-military men, but I get why the military met roadblocks in their effort to do a good deed.