So this is … interesting. Last night, Saturday Night Live did a sketch, featuring guest host Lena Dunham, about Men’s Rights Activists. Alas, it wasn’t actually funny, or particularly on the mark, and it was kind of, sort of, maybe, a little bit racist (well, ok, a lot), but it did at least give a pretty good impression of what people in the real world think of the MRAs we know and loathe so well. I can’t embed it here, so go take a look at it on Hulu.
The folks in the Men’s Rights subreddit are up in arms about it, and have started not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six threads on the subject. (There may be more; that’s all I noticed.) Well, it’s not often they get this much attention, so I guess their excitement is understandable.
Given that the sketch was actually pretty crappy in a lot of ways, the MRAs did have some legitimate complaints to make against it — like the fact that the women in the sketch mocked the MRA character for being an unattractive loser. But naturally the Men’s Rights Redditors managed to undercut even this perfectly reasonable criticism by attacking the women in the sketch for being uggos. (Oh, misogynists, why do you hate Lena Dunham so much?) Here’s a rather delightfully ironic snippet of the discussion:
![SNL manages to misinterpret MRA arguments, shame man who are less physically attractive than others by implying they are somehow lesser, says that all MRAs are only MRAs because of bad love experiences, and accuse the MRHM of being pro-life, which is a blatant lie. (hulu.com) submitted 7 hours ago by Feminists_Are_Jelly 29 comments share source save hide give gold report hide all child comments sorted by: hot navigate by: submitter | moderator | friend | admin | IAmA | images | popular | new you are viewing a single comment's thread. view the rest of the comments → [–]MockingDead 16 points 6 hours ago (27|11) A bunch of unattractive unfunny women impugning a man for being not an apex male. permalink save source save give gold hide child comments [–]ugly_duck 5 points 5 hours ago (16|11) A bunch of unattractive unfunny women impugning a man for being not an apex male. Imagine if the genders were reversed. permalink save source save parent give gold [–]Grubnar 6 points 4 hours ago (12|6) I am trying ... and I can't. Men are not usually judged by their attractiveness, but by their wealth.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ironymrastyle.png?resize=536%2C556&ssl=1)
Indeed, I’ve rarely seen irony so thick as in the outraged comments of MRAs in these threads. Here’s another angry Redditor:
Heavens! Sexism and shaming! MRAs NEVER engage in either of those things!
Oh, wait. That’s pretty much the entire basis of their movement.
Ruwanimo, you say you can’t imagine how it would look if the genders were reversed? You don’t have to imagine. All you have to do is go to the Men’s Rights subreddit, or A Voice for Men, or any other prominent (or not-so-prominent) Men’s Rights site. Or you could read through the Man Boobz archives. Ta da! Literally hundreds — make that thousands — of examples of MRAs directing “flagrant sexism and shaming” at women. (Also note: this shaming is directed at women, not only at feminists, whereas the SNL skit directed its shaming only at MRAs, not at men in general.)
You’re welcome!
The AgainstMensRights subreddit is also all over this thing, though they’ve limited themselves to four threads — here, here, here and here, which is where I found that first discussion I screenshotted.
I have agree, I did not find the video funny. It just did not made me laugh at all :/ And I also think it was quite racist.
The hot slash superficial slash not very smart slash unable to speak english properly latinoamerican. And it is not about the accent which I guess anyone has to a more or lesser extent in a foreign language, same with english speakers talking spanish. But about the fact that she could not say anything right.
I am not quite informed about these men right things yet, so I can`t comment at that but I will definetely will start reading about it. If they really fight for the things mentioned in the video would be a bit stupid. I would imagine an organization of that type could fight for “paternity leave”, equal salaries for same jobs independent of gender and support women in their own quest, and so many other things that are out there… :/
Hey, Ally, I stumbled across this collection of trans resources earlier today. I don’t know your email or I’d send it directly. And, I guess, if you don’t find it useful, somebody else out there might.
http://fuckyeahlgbtqblackpeople.tumblr.com/post/77619683383/theunforgiven137-ive-compiled-this-list-of
I know I’m late but the whole “meep” debate about it being racist (I think the better word is ethnocentric but I could be wrong) is unfounded in that it’s just an unfunny internet thing, not a language barrier.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=meep&defid=720612
And I “get” what they were going for here. The joke is that he paid for a mail order bride who didn’t speak english very well and was not familiar with the culture so he could convince her that he was doing positive work which is totally something an MRA would at least try to do if he could, but, yeah, the racist caricature was super heavy-handed, and the poor delivery ruined any chance for the gag to be successful. I’ve seen better scripts come directly from this website, thinking specifically about A Voice for Pierre. But hey, it’s SNL, which is cringe-inducingly unfunny and has been forever.
I don’t think MRA’s interact enough with actual people to realize that shows like the Real Housewives aren’t representative of very many people, and that the boogeyman of women marrying rich men just to steal half their income and live like queens is so fucking rare that to associate the vast majority who, on average, get less than half of what it costs to raise a child through child support, is just willful ignorance.
“just willful ignorance.”
I think this pretty much describes all MRA ideas
Do you even know what this movement is even about? Look, let me dumb it down for you.
Women get paid less then men, so they have women’s-rights activists.
Men are shown as idiots in pretty much every tv show they appear on many channels and people only cry when a woman dies in fiction as well as real life, thus they have men’s rights activists.
Life is not men lording over women, it’s billions of people being fucked over by a system that doesn’t make any sense. Hell, go over to TV tropes and punch in “Double Standards”, then count the number of times in fiction that men get the short end of the stick. Then after that count the number of times everyone gets the short end of the stick in RL.
Seriously, do some reading before you speak next time.
Do you?
You have no idea what feminism is, do you? Equal pay for equal work is one issue, yes. But I have no idea what “women’s-rights activists” are.
Citation, citation, citation. Last I checked, the men on Law & Order and its many spin-offs; CSI and its many spin-offs; ER; etc. are all portrayed as competent individuals with varied and unique personalities, not as idiots. As far as people only crying when women die? Are you kidding? I bawled like a baby at my grandad’s funeral AND when Dumbledore died.
This is not what feminists are saying.
The word you’re looking for is “kyriarchy.”
Are talking about fiction, or real life? You seem to be confusing the two. TV tropes isn’t going to tell me bubkis about, say, living and working conditions around the globe. And for every negative stereotype or trope about men, I could point you to one about women. Yeah, pop culture has pretty stupid stereotypes that need to go away.
I think you’re the one who needs to do some more reading.
…
I think most of the tears I’ve shed for deaths, real or fictional, through my life have been for men.
Or cats of either sex, of course.
I’ll be the first to admit: If no one ever cried when a man died, then we would need a men’s movement.
::nods::
Well, I always did think “feminism” was a bit of a mouthful
This either says a lot about you, or the people you know/ tv shows you watch. Either way, it’s kind of a lose-lose situation here.
Either that or your fictional women are coming to life, in which case you live in a world of wonder that I wish to inhabit. If MRAs are just campaigning for the rights of fictional male characters to come to life, I for one stand in solidarity with them.
Truly an impeccable analysis of gender.
Did troll really just compare the real life bigotry and oppression that women face to the presence of bumbling male characters on TV? Seriously troll, if the worst thing about being a man is seeing Joey Tribiani on Friends reruns, there probably isn’t a need for the MRM.
Oh, and trolly, if you want to see people upset over the death of a fictional man, here’s one
RIP King in the North!
I think you must have no idea who Matthew Cuthbert is.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleStandard
47 entries for men
66 for women.
45 for “either”.
Of course, you did forget the most important part of tv tropes.
It being true in a work of fiction has no bearing on it being true in reality.
What was your point again?
Another thing about the portray of men on TV as stupid is that it has no real effect on power. It exists purely as a form of ironic comedy. There is no outer culture that supports the view that men are unintelligent – quite the opposite. While men are “demeaned” on TV, they are praised for their intellect everywhere else. By contrast, women who are demeaned for being female are also demeaned for being female on TV shows. Yet another example of why misandry isn’t institutionalized.
I bawled my eyes out at the end of Blake’s 7 … Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid … The Sting (okay, only the first time) … Bram Stoker’s Dracula …
Also, TVtropes is just a giant list of stuff compiled by teenagers, many of whom are budding MRAs. It is statistically meaningless.
TVTropes does some good work though.
Madame Defarge’s classification on the Tale of Two Cities page as a “Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds” on the Tale of Two Cities is wonderful and so spot on.
Blargh, late night typing, not friendly. I should sleep, now. 🙁
Oh boy, another fucking Intellectual Giant™ who thinks women and feminist males are so stupid that they require talking down to. Please, enlighten us, Your Sageness!
You’re right, that IS a dumbed-down viewpoint. Unfortunately, you’ve dumbed feminism down so that YOU can “understand” it, but you’re not telling us anything we don’t already know. It’s not just about that; it’s about that and many other things. Bro, do you even FEMINIST?
O RLY? You must not watch a lot of TV. Hell, I don’t either, but I’ve seen enough to know you are dead wrong on all counts here. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to dumb down what I know to make it digestible to your delicate sensibilities.
Oh gee, what a scintillating analysis. Not a bit shallow or stupid there, are you? I guess you done told us!
>snort< Dude, it's only a silly website. It's not an actual scorecard, you know.
Take your own advice, fella. You need it more than anyone else here does.
How about you do some thinking before you speak next time? That’d be an improvement.
I wonder whose life is more painful: the fictional bumbling dad character, who gets credit for just showing up while his wife invisibly handles everything for their family in the background; or the irl lead actor on a sit-com, who is generally better-known and better-paid than the rest of the cast.
For every fat stupid guy on TV, there’s an amoral genius hero (Walter White, Don Draper, Dr. House, Frank Underwood, half the male GoT characters).
Also, as Auggz pointed out, there are no negative consequences on TV for being unattractive and stupid. In fact they are rewarded with a conventionally attractive wife (Homer Simpson, Doug from King of Queens, Jim from According to Jim, Mark Addy’s character on Still Standing, Peter from family guy). Can anyone imagine a female version of Homer Simpson ever getting a hot, loving and nurturing husband? That’ll probably never happen. The few fat women allowed to be on TV have husbands that are similarly conventionally unattractive (Roseanne, Melissa McCarthy).
I really fail to see misandry on TV. Especially since most showrunners, entertainment executives and directors are men!
Thanks for clarifying that your movement really cares about non-existent issues. You’re credit to team.