Yesterday, several days after the twentieth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, A Voice for Men took a moment to honor the brilliant musician who tragically ended his life at the age of only 27.
Well, not exactly. What they actually did was run a terrible poem using the anniversary of Cobain’s death as an excuse to launch an extended attack on the supposed evils of feminism.
Here’s the opening:
Feminists killed Kurt Cobain
Men my age are all the same
They hate themselves & feel ashamed
For what they are & cannot change
It gets worse. The poem, written by a YouTube MRA calling himself Laudanum Byron, continues on for another 104 lines after this. Only 13 refer to Cobain, and five of these are simply repetitions of the opening accusation: “feminists killed Kurt Cobain.”
The rest of the poem consists of an assortment of Men’s Rights talking points sketched out in the most melodramatic manner possible.
Men chastised, demonized,
Healthy males pathologized
A man is just a dirty ape
Longing, lust, desire: all rape
Your body is a loaded gun
And all that it has done is wrong
Like all too many MRAs, Mr. Byron lets his anger at women get the better of his logic. In the following lines, for example, he lashes out at women both for living off of the earnings of men — and for earning money of their own.
Now the girls get told get what you can
After all, he’s just a man
You’re right to think it’s right to take
Yes you go girl, you make him pay
The girls get taught they must get on
Like work empowered anyone:
To sell your life for dollar bills
Taking calls & stacking shelves
In offices & factories
Fulfilment sought in drudgery
Mr. Byron – no relation, one presumes, to the actual Byron – seems to have only a rudimentary notion of what a poem actually is. While most, though not all, of his lines scan, he has persistent troubles with the concept of rhyme, with his aabb and aabbcc rhyme schemes dominated by half-rhymes and quarter-rhymes and, well, the words have some similar sounds in them.
“Bills” and “shelves” don’t rhyme, or half-rhyme, despite both ending in the letter “s.” “Take” and “pay” aren’t even remotely close.
Admittedly, “chivalry” is a tough one to rhyme. But surely one can do better than “steeds.”
White knights, on their hobbled steeds
Still cling to laws of chivalry
Passed over by the queens they save
A joke to all the other slaves
When he pulls off an actual rhyme, it comes a surprise:
All of us the sons of Cain
Feminists killed Kurt Cobain.
But while we’re on the topic, it’s worth pointing out that feminists and/or feminism did not actually kill Kurt Cobain. (Nor did anyone else; the conspiracy theories suggesting he was murdered don’t make a lot of sense.)
Byron’s only “evidence” linking feminism to the suicide?
He screamed onstage & pierced his flesh
Put on make-up, wore a dress
Look, nobody knows for sure the reason or reasons Cobain took his own life, but he was a troubled man with a history of suicide attempts. He suffered from depression and from a painful, persistent stomach ailment. He was addicted to heroin. And as his suicide note made clear, he found the fame he had achieved to be something of an intolerable burden; he felt like a fake. Like a lot of suicides, Cobain’s could be seen as psychologically overdetermined; it could have been caused by any or all of these things.
Using his suicide to score cheap rhetorical points against feminism is not only dishonest but highly disrespectful to his memory.
To top off this gigantic platter of disrespect, whoever wrote the headline on AVFM didn’t even bother to spell Cobain’s first name correctly. It’s Kurt, with a K.
Below, “Byron’s” own reading of his poem. If you can’t bear listening to it — I only made it a couple of stanzas in before I had to shut it off — you can make your way to AVFM, or to YouTube, to read the rest. I feel safe in saying that Kurt, who considered himself a feminist, would have hated it, and A Voice for Men as well.
Men are the very best of best
This much is true you can’t protest
But feminism gives me no choice
Men need a place to speak their voice
A Voice for all men everywhere
Except of course, for that one there
He is not strong and is quite fat
I can’t associate with that
Then there’s that other one, it’s true
He’s not the same as me and you
For other men he displays lust
So reject him I clearly must
Another one wears women’s clothes
Men shouldn’t wear such things as those
So go away and don’t return
Another one that I must spurn
That one a yonder is not for us
He’s fond of making quite a fuss
When I use slurs like the n-word
Free Speech, dude, have you not heard?
Then there’s the other one, the cad
Who says that women aren’t bad
An absurd claim that makes me stunned
You must agree he must be shunned
All of the ones that try to say
That violence is not okay
Well, what am I supposed to do
I must dismiss all of them too
And do not even dare imply
I should try not to be “that guy”
Such are the worst of accusations
I won’t abide such declarations
So now that that’s out of the way
And we will not be led astray
It’s time for the Voice’s creation
As soon as I get your donation
Now come on, don’t you be cheap
It’s a good cause, so reach in deep
With that money that you bring
I will make such a wondrous thing
A Voice for all men that resounds
A Voice for men that knows no bounds
A Voice to speak, and shout, and chatter
Except the men who do not matter
@Myoo
:: standing ovation ::
O, it’s hard to be a man.
Tis a truth dependable.
Beset by lonely boners, and
As a sex, expendable.
Who gets sent to die in war?
Answer that one, witches!
I died twice defending your
Freedom, heartless bitches.
Child support is misandry!
Also rape discussion, too.
All the geniuses are men.
Feminists are made of poo.
Now I’m angry, sad, confused;
Women’s hearts are cold as ices.
Stroke my ego! Suck my wang!
Soothe my existential crisis!
Don’t have the skill for mra poetry, but I’ll try my hand at smarmimg a jingle (with apologies to kids, Toys R Us & thinking people everywhere)
I don’t wanna grow up
I’m an MRA kid
There’s a million ways to torment folks
That I can have fun with
From gropes to rapes to street harassment
It’s the greatest movement there is
I don’t wanna grow up
Cuz, slutty, if I did
I couldn’t be an MRA kid
Kathleen Hanna did a show about her days running around with Kurt in Olympia, WA:
http://youtu.be/xWO4JnP2T40
“I died twice defending your
Freedom, heartless bitches.”
Lol! XD Though, MRA ghosts aren’t exactly a pleasant thought… :/
@Myoo That your poem describes Paul Elam and AVFM perfectly is sorta depressing…
I had a hard time deciding between that and Purrtrelle.
@tesformes:
No. It’s just much easier to mock people in verse than it is to do it with a logical bent towards deciphering all their assumptions, because you can get logic wrong and argue poorly, but very people (I’ve found) will take any time to say anything to any kind of poetry other than “That’s odd”
I guess very few MRA’ are into Billy Collins (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176056)
So I picked it up here! On Manboobz. But I cheat, altering an already written poem is easy and quantity makes up for quality sometimes. And so I figured “Argh! I’LL DO IT IN RHYMES!”
Never seriously pursued it other than on other occasions where I write small bits of birthdays or other celebrations (Which I started doing after mocking trolls here, to what I assume is the delight of others)
Heheheh. Nice one, Lady Mondegreen
@Myoo:
That was pretty damn spot on.
“If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different colour, or women, please do one favor for us — leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” – Nirvana
Why are MRAs trying to claim him? Cobain clearly wasn’t on their team.
We had a baby MRA who kept trying to claim Thom Yorke too. They’re not too smart.
Though it’d give the chance to see Mr K whip their asses with a revival of his old skills as a soldier … I’d enjoy that.
Maybe not *feminists* that killed Cobain, but…
“Lord Byron & Kurt Cobain
Both spectral beings of another plane
Scared to death the MRA.”
(Byron would probably take part just for bad poetry, I don’t think he was feminist-friendly. I’ll have to look him up, again)
By “take part”, I meant “join Cobain in scaring that jerk to death”. Also, I confess that I didn’t write from the MRA’s goofy perspective.
I also have an alternate name for these guys which is far more appropriate…..”Male Supremacist Douchebags” or “MSD”s.
Another suggestion….”Male Privilege Backlashers” or “MPB”s.
MRA works well as Misogynist Rape Apologists/Advocates, too.
OMG! Those names are brilliant, spukikitty. I always thought that “men’s rights advocate” was a misnomer because while there are true men’s rights causes most MRSs and the MRA movement as a whole don’t address any of them. Mostly they are domestic terrorists who call for arson (burning down court houses) and delight in misogyny or stalking women, even beating up women, such as the recent event in Canada where a feminist said she was attacked. Nobody can say for sure who was responsible, but given the facts I believe 100% that it was an “MRA.”
The thing about Kurt is that he was the exact opposite of everything MRA is. MRA’s take all the pain in their lives and pathetically use it as an excuse to become cruel and hateful and to hurt others any way they can. Kurt, on the other hand, took all the hurt and pain in his life and stubbornly and bravely refused to let it change him. He retained his compassion and empathy through everything even as he felt the world was ripping him apart. THAT’S bravery and strength. And honestly, I am glad in a way that he can’t see this crap, all these misogyny cults like MRA, and Redpill, incel, and MGTOW, because it would have upset and disappointed him so deeply. What a disgustingly disrespectful poem.