I‘ve got a nice long review essay on Michael Kimmel’s new book Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era up at the American Prospect. Check it out!
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Check out my review of Michael Kimmel’s Angry White Men on The American Prospect
Yup. They kvetch and they kvetch, but as David points out (repeatedly), they never do anything else. Or nothing constructive, at any rate. They seem to think that complaining and pissing (in concert! in contests!) all over the internets is legit activism for their weird brand of social justice. Except that it’s all just petty ugliness aimed at deepening the same status quo they’re kvetching about, with more chips for the guys who already have too may on their shoulders. I’m half tempted to offer them a crumpled pack of McDonald’s ketchup for those chips.
naltia: I think you’re exactly right… especially for highly authoritarian people, they need to find a group that they see as lower on the totem pole to blame and attack.
I seriously think a big part of the problem too is that they can’t reconcile the political reality with their own emotional experience (nor can they understand that their own emotional experience may be flawed or unimportant). “How can these people be talking about women’s disadvantages when my self-esteem in high school entirely depended on whether women liked me??”
And of course they will never, never admit that they, the common denominator in all these failed relationships, might just be unlikeable.
…and that their lack of likability stems, in a large part, from being unable to see past the ends of their wieners.
Wiener Myopia!
I wonder if the jacques.cuze who’s having a tantrum over the moderation of his rants on the Prospect thread is the Slymepit-friendly troll of almost the same name who’s a sometime pest over at Freethought Blogs. It would not be in the least surprising given the number of anti-feminist MRAtheists.
Also, I have yet to see a comment over there that isn’t negative, a tantrum, or deluded. Wow, what a commentariat!
So the US is Sodom and Gomorrah and its capital is Versailles? (Not sure how city states have another city as capital, but never mind.)
Someone’s a tad confused.
I just picked up my requested copy of Kimmel’s book this evening though I doubt it will tell me much you haven’t shared in your review.
La Strega, there’s actually a lot in Kimmel’s book I didn’t talk about.
Ally Fogg gave a not entirely dis-similar review of the book in The Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/07/angry-white-men-gender-stereotyping
I’m still thinking that I’ll get the book anyway.
Great article, David! I’m looking forward for more on similar issues. By the way, I see that the mra minions have already attacked the comment section, wasn’t expecting anything less from them lol. I must say I love how you perfectly pointed out the fact that instead of building domestic violence shelters for men with the money they receive from donations or raise awarness about prison rape, male victims of domestic abuse etc. , all they do is whine and harass individual women out of their rage at women not being willing to submit to them, women being independent and demanding social equality. Civil right’s movement my ass.
I had seen that book and thought it was another MRA manifesto. Now it looks like something I might actually want to read.
MRA comment swarms usually enrage me (sidenote: do they read the Prospect, or were they hatestalking this blog again?), but these are kind of hilarious:
Yes, “radical” feminists are currently helping men and boys as part of their decades-long campaign to harm men and boys. It’s a really, really elaborate false flag!
Anyway David, as always, thanks for soaking the damage and filtering the MRM to us in a way that lets us laugh instead of cry. Allyship: ur doin it right.
I’m really looking forward to your book!
The one thing I noticed with the whole white man rage thing is that for decades we’ve had to drag these guys kicking and screaming to stop hating other white people (Irish, Italians, Polish, etc). And they’d still be hating them if they could.
“The men’s rights movement, for those who have yet to encounter it, has little in common with the so-called “mythopoetic” men’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which gathered in drum circles in the woods to reclaim their primal masculinity, poet Robert Bly at their helm. Its real roots lie in the anti-feminist backlash of the early ’90s, with ex-feminist Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power as its Bible.”
Even if you don’t believe what Robert St. Estephe says about the history of the MHRM, your statement here ends up problematic. Here’s what Robert St. Estephe says: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/setting-the-record-straight/
There’s ton of MRA issues that say can get found in David Benatar’s The Second Sexism and there’s NO reference to Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power in that book. There’s a journal called New Male Studies. There’s other books like Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry. That doesn’t even get into studies done on issues like domestic violence or sexual assault (and books that reference those studies like those of Philip W. Cook) and how women’s violence against men in domestic situations gets ignored and how many definitions of rape in studies or in a legal system make it impossible for a woman to rape a man.
There’s also the fact that there exist plenty of MHRAs in India. Only a small fraction of them probably even have a faint clue about Farrell’s book. So, Futrelle’s claims (and the implicit claim made at The Spearhead) about the origins of the MHRM simply fails, as does his characterization of The Myth of Male Power.
Also, last I checked the National Coalition for Men is suing the federal government for discrimination against men in terms of the U. S. Selective Service System.
>MHRM
LOL okay buddy just go away
Boring troll is boring.
Has there ever been an “interesting” troll? Like, ever?
“One thing that struck me while reading it, is that the reason they blame women and other races rather than the ultra-rich is because they’ve bought into the narrative of the ultra rich, the belief that hard work+determination=success.”
Leftwingfox, I read somewhere that the attitudes of many US folks against social justice, healthcare, social safety nets, etc is because that group views itself as ‘temporarily distressed millionaires’ rather than the 99%
Wish I could recall where I read it.
Of course that’s a US centric comment & says nothing about MRAs in other countries
What if part of the issue is that MRAs realize at some level that they really aren’t special or talented and know they can’t compete if there is a level playing field for all? It’s easier to be last in the ‘awesome’ category (where certain undesirables are not permitted to enter) than to be last in general
Doug, and what it your point exactly? There have been antifeminists as long as there have been feminists, and misogyny itself stretches back into prehistory (as far as we can figure it). There were some MRAish books/groups in the 70s. But the MRM as we know it today took its ideological form in the 90s. Farrell’s book basically defined the agenda and to a remarkable extent still does — even amongst MRAs who have never read his book, because his ideas are so widely disseminated amongst MRAs.
And he’s still revered as an MRA elder statesman. Myth of Male Power is the first book listed in the r/mensrights sidebar under “recommended reading.” (And two of the other three books listed, the two by Christina Hoff Sommers, also came out of the 90s. (The latter book, which came out in 2000, was based on a magazine article from 99 I believe.)
AVFM lists 7 books in its suggested reading list; 2 are by Farrell, including The Myth of Male Power.
And why exactly did you mention the other books? I mean, yes, there have been other MRAish books written since Farrell’s book. None of them have been as influential (including other books by Farrell himself). I wasn’t giving the entire history of the MRM.
The NCFM is suing the govt about selective service? Huh. NOW did that back in the 80s.
“Has there ever been an “interesting” troll? Like, ever?”
Not really…but there might conceivably be one that could be fun to soccer-dribble around for a bit…
LOL. MRAs are taking a page from the feminist playbook, 30 years later.
So, I know pecunium is fond of his glittery “citation needed” gif, and it is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, but since there are people here that love the water animals I decided to make a punny meme as an alternative to use when our trolls make unsupported allegations:
http://i.imgur.com/NSLrZ4I.jpg
Bina – Yes, but then like many cheaply-made toys, they fall apart and become useless (and not fun to play with, since why would you want to kick a flat ball?).