So I’ve been skimming through the mass of comments that the Daily Beast piece on the Men’s Rightsers now has trailing in its wake. So far I think this is my favorite exchange.
Yep, that’s DriverSuz — aka Suzanne McCarley, “Senior Editor” of A Voice for Men.
And yep, that’s Angry Harry, the fellow that many MRAs call “the father of the men’s rights movement.”
Some critics of this blog complain whenever I quote some crackpot commenter rather than one of the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement. Sometimes, it turns out, the crackpot commenters ARE the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement.
“You should be happy that we’re only calling for women to be self-warming fleshlights and house servants! It could be worse! We could be sending you to pens and cages instead of a house!”
Whut?
Dear David, wow these turkeys are morphing onto velociraptors! What surprises me the most is: their female suck-ups – there’s no other way to describe those bayoches! Hey Suzanne, get on yer freegin’ feet and gedda life. 🙂
Hey, Susan – get a sense of irony. It seems like you could use one.
Just because a lot, if not most, men care/d about women enough not to treat them like furniture doesn’t mean that there still wasn’t a system of norms and gender roles etc. in place that was (is) oppressive in nature. When these things are culturally ingrained in our way of thinking, it’s hard to recognize them as being immoral, sexist, racist and what ever other nasty thought-patterns and habits, even when they are still alive and kicking.
My mother, for example, has some very ridiculous and sexist ideas about how men/women behave and think. My father is actually more progressive in this fort, but is still very prone to mansplaining things. He also believes that some learned traits are biological differences, and refuses to be corrected, simply because most people fit these stereotypes (in his mind anyway). My brother has only recently started questioning his line of thinking.
Oh, and these guys seem to completely ignore the fact that women have always rebelled against social norms because they are fucking people and therefore are perfectly capable of making their own opinions, recognizing injustice and doing something about it.
It’s like the thought that women are autonomous beings hasn’t occurred to them…
It’s occurred to them, Catfish, and I think it scares the hell out of them. This is their reaction. Pretty much the definition of what it means to be oppressive.
Without the horrible men around, ladies, who would protect you from the horrible men? Shut up and be grateful.
MRAs have an even worse opinion of men than they do of women. They just think women are dumb, but they think men are monsters.
Hey Susan, go drop your nonsense somewhere else.
“Well, that seems sort of extreme but otherwise they make a lot of really great points.” — R. Tod Kelly
Pop quiz! Which of the following things do MRAs agree with:
1) Women should be glad that men didn’t raise them like cattle, because there was nothing stopping them from doing so.
2) Women have never been truly oppressed, and in fact, have had it Pretty Damn Good All Along.
Time’s up! The answer is both of them!
Welcome to the MRM: Where being far enough to the extreme on either side of a position can support the same ideology!
bayoches
Is this supposed to be one of those humorous ways of saying “bitch” without actually saying “bitch”? Misogyny aside, how would one even pronounce this? My brain keeps trying to pronounce it in Spanish, like “buy-OH-ches”.
Always amuses me when dudes say every woman throughout history owes her very life to the protection of men, but doesn’t seem to think it “counts” that nearly every man throughout history was a baby boy who *exists* because of a woman and was fed and cared for and raised by a woman. But apparently actually growing your very body from hers isn’t something that’s worth acknowledging as important, while men protecting women from nameless horrors after they’re grown is what deserves all the credit. Super.
emilygoddess – I presume it’s “bitches” but in a sassy tone?
Doesn’t make the underlying message any better: “I’m using a slur against women to describe who I think are UBER UGLIES”.
Off topic: is it ever appropriate to call yourself a bitch to “reclaim” the term? I’m sort of curious.
dlouwe: Don’t you know that demanding internal consistency is nothing but abject misandry.
Frankly the way these folk want to treat women makes me prefer the company of cows and pigs.
Good question, Alice. If it can be done with other slurs I don’t see why not. I could go either way. I certainly wouldn’t be bothered if the term just wasn’t used in any context.
Hello, Poe.
@swankivy – A year or two back, we had a troll around here who described pregnancy and birth as an involuntary function, no different than taking a dump – not worthy of credit at all. While most MRA’s haven’t given their thoughts on pregnancy and childbirth (beyond scorning women who take too long to get back in their pre-birth shape), I’d suspect his was not an isolated opinion.
As for raising children (let alone their heroes), they seem to forget it happened at all. Apparently most women throughout history have sat around eating bon-bons (what does that translate into in, say, ancient Egypt? Honey cakes?) all day while men did The Real Work.
@Alice It is an interesting question, but I’m not a fan personally. I hate when minorities break each other down with the oppressor’s slurs and I’ve seen how it eventually plays out: “If these bitches can call themselves bitches, why can’t I use that word?” But there definitely is another side to it. Just so we don’t mind answering that really dumb question over and over again.
Bayoches was a unit of Roman currency according to Google Books so maybe Susan views money as really evil and that is why zie called them that? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Alice, I’m unsure. Other women would still be offended by it probably, and when I think of women “reclaiming” it, I immediately think of Nicki Minaj going “I’m a bad bitch, Ima-Ima bad bitch” over and over again and it sounds dumb.
But some women could pull it off I bet. I have a friend with a belt buckle that says “BITCH” and I admit it’s pretty sweet. I could kinda go either way. It would be nice but I’m skeptical.
HA!
I can think of one word that was successfully reclaimed, the Swedish word “bög” för male homosexual. It used to be a pure slur, then people started using it about themselves – nowadays it’s just a neutral descriptive word. Well, for everyone who isn’t a total homophobe anyway – homophobes can use it as a slur, but hey, I’ve heard homophobes use “homosexual” as a slur as well. There’s really no stopping bigoted people from taking descriptive words and saying them in a tone that makes them slurs. I’d still say that word has been successfully reclaimed.
But maybe, for a word to be successfully reclaimed, it needs a clear descriptive meaning from the start. Like “bög” meaning “male homosexual”. It might be more difficult to reclaim words that don’t have that much descriptive content to start with, like “bitch”.
David Futrelle
You know I just sent you a tweet mention the same article you plucked the choice sexist comments from.
What a grand human rights movement they’re building, on the same strong moral foundation as your average protection racket. To paraphrase Cliff, “Find gender you got there. Shame if we were to start forced breeding programs for it, or making it live in barns with the other livestock.”
Breeding programs. BREEDING programs.
Fuck these pieces of shit.
I’m sorry if this deviates too much from the topic, but I have to vent. This over the top, aggressive, and outrageous gender assignment in baby clothes is driving me bonkers! I thought it was bad when I had my sone (everything sports, “mommy’s hero”, etc), but shopping for my daughter is absolutely horrifying. Everything is doused in pink, frills, glitter, etc. I couldn’t find girl jeans that weren’t “skinny” or had writing on the butt. She’s 13 months old! And princess, princess, princess, fucking princess everywhere!!! She can’t crawl in a dress because it gets stuck under her knees. She can’t crawl easily in these tiny leggings and skinny jeans that I have to peel off of her. Granted, I do like dresses and frills, I like Girly things, but criminy, not all the time! And she’s a baby! You can’t tell me writing on the butt isn’t sexual. I usually just put her in her brother’s old baby clothes because those jeans and overalls are comfortable. But then everyone thinks she’s a boy because she’s not wearing flippin pink all the time.