Oh dear. Some very confused dudes on the A Voice for Men Forums are angry at the Huffington Post for suggesting that Confused Cats Against Feminism might just be a parody of Women Against Feminism.
A guy calling himself Humansplaining w/ Jarred starts off the thread — titled “HuffPo tries – and fails – to politicize ‘Cats Against Feminism'” — with this little rant. (I’ve bolded some of the especially silly stuff.)
So, being that ‘Women Against Feminism’ is an internet phenomenon, through Tumblr as well as Twitter, the internet inevitably took this thread in the direction it takes EVERYTHING nowadays – cats.
If you read through all the ‘Cats Against Feminism’ memes, you’ll notice that they pretty much all revolve around, well…CATS. Go figure, huh? References to food, tuna, shedding, and biting predominate these posts. The references to ‘Feminism’ are basically incidental, since this is just piggy-backing on the viral success of ‘Women Against Feminism’. Those posting these memes never really express whether they are in favor of, or against Feminism. It’s clearly not meant to appeal to EITHER side of the issue. Rather, it’s simply a silly meme meant to produce a few chuckles for ANYONE that happens to run across them. Just like every other stupid cat meme on the internet, of which there must literally be TRILLIONS.
But HuffPo apparently sees things differently …
You know what? I think those CATS are smarter than the people at Huffpo that produced this article. THEY think that Feminism is a stupid and pointless human concept, and they wish you’d stop talking about it and fighting amongst each other, because they need you to FEED them!
Seriously HuffPo, learn to take a joke, and give the ideology a rest for 5 FUCKING SECONDS already.Because the cats are laughing at YOU now…
AVFM forum dudes, I hate to break it to you, but the cats aren’t laughing at the Huffington Post. They’re laughing at you.
Maybe I need to start up a new blog: Confused Cats Confused by Confused Cats Against Feminism.
Sparky. It is estimated the top 1% control 40% of the world wealth. Your point is utterly moot,
Men make up the majority of the legislature, yet look how poorly men are doing in the US in the list I gave above. If the patriarchy is there to serves the needs of men, it’s not doing a very good job now is it?
Women have their reproductive health legislated for to answer your question. Pregnancy is unique. You cannot look at it in an orthodox way, as you would say sperm.
Also, keep in mind that unmarried fathers have little or no legal rights to their offspring, yet have the legal repsonsibility to pay for it for those children. The point here, is that a woman has options when pregnant.
1. Abortion.
2.Keep the child
3. Adoption.
A man has none. Not one. He has no choice. I believe that a man should be able to, at some early point in the pregnancy,opt out by signing a waiver perhaps waiving his rights entirely to the child, and with it all responsibility. What I’m saying is that he too should have the option of surrendering his parental rights, just like a woman does when she chooses adoption.
Which genders body is used to sell products? Oh FFS, sparky, Both genders. Have you not heard of the music industry, or Hollywood, averds for aftershave etc etc
Come off it. If you seriously think that any of what you, or anyone else so far has listed, is comparable to the widescale issues facing men across all of US society, you’re out of your mind.
Niall,
If you’re going to spout assfax, you shouldn’t keep providing citations that refute them.
Four out of ten. Not four out of five. Since you are claiming men have it worse than women in the US, you need to find a similar citation with the rates of sexual coercion that female students experience. You claim to have a social science degree. If that’s true you should no better than to just post stats for one group and not the other if you’re going to make a comparison.
And yes, patriarchy can explain it. Men are assumed in patriarchal gender roles to be too strong to be victimized by women and are assumed to always be up for sex with any woman who wants it.
OK, place your bets for today’s sock hunt here. I’m tentatively calling Pell.
I’m thinking Pell too (IP address is original, but we all know how much that means)
This may be the ur-MRA comment. It’s comically biased, the grammar and sentence structure are as terrible as the logic, and it makes no sense.
Let us all look at sperm in an orthodox way, children, for therein lies the truth and the light. And possibly a whole lot of acid.
Niall, can you slow down? I think I have bingo but I should probably let everyone else catch up to the thirty MRA tropes you’ve rattled off in the course of two comments.
I took a philosophy course on Justice once. I’m a lawyer, judge, politician, religious scholar, and who knows what else all in one.
@Niall:
The sample size was admittedly limited, which is pretty apparent when a lot of the data consisted of 100% of the responses within certain racial groups going the same way.
More importantly, the study did not analyze the female responses, so we don’t have a baseline to compare the male results to. This is important because we want to look at causes. Are young men in particular being subjected to sexual coercion, or are young people just generally coercive? I don’t know the stats for men being coercive towards women, or men towards men or women towards women, and the study doesn’t provide them, so you have no basis for knowing if those numbers are large or small, or why those numbers are the way they are.
You claim that study on man-on-woman sexual abuse is in its infancy. I strongly deny this. You know how people get rates of sexual abuse for women? By looking at sexual abuse in general, and then looking at how those stats break down across gender lines. What they don’t do (initially, anyway) is perform a study where only women’s responses are analyzed.
@ Niall
ORLY
Sexy Car Ads
Sexy Food Ads
Sexy Clothes Ads
Sexy Movie Ads
I could keep going…
Me too, cassandra — there’s a good chance he’s Pell.
What is this word salad? Your lettuce is wilted, and your cheese is moldy. Do you expect me to eat this? Because the only part of me that this is “upsetting”, as you self-servingly claim, is my digestive system. Waiter, take this crap away!
And yeah, try and convince me that you’re not one of the loud and shouting very minuscule minority that is antifeminism and the MRBM. You’ve already demonstrated that you lack humor and reading comprehension both. I’ll bet that next, you’ll be spouting the same old talking points that have already been debunked a thousand times here, along with some dodgy and fudged statistics from the usual suspects…
>looks quickly at other pages in this thread, nods sagely<
See, I knew it…you went and did. You seriously think that repetition of a Big Lie will miraculously turn it into the truth? You've been eating baloney sandwiches made by Karl Rove again, haven't you. Bleah, another thing that's bad for the digestion.
Now kindly hop back up on your turnip truck and skedaddle.
@Niall
“If the patriarchy is there to serves the needs of men, it’s not doing a very good job now is it?”
Patriarchy isn;t about serving the needs of all men. it’s about serving the needs of a specific group of men – wealthy, and in modern times to some extent, middle-class men. You can’t make any serious critical analysis about society if you don’t consider class (or race, ethnicity, age, and a slew of other factors I’m too lazy to list right now).
Intersectionality, go learn about it..
Why are MRAs so shit at intersectionalism?* Misogyny is not the only axis of oppression. Classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism etc. all exist. That some men fare better than others in any given culture is not evidence against patriarchy.
* Just kidding. I know why. Because they’re misogynists and don’t give two shits about social justice.
Yes, it can. You would see why if tyou knew shit about “patriarchy theory” in the first place.
Well, Jesus, fromafar. You’re right. advertisers selling products is a form of state and legal oppression. ffs….
Explain it then Ally.
You mean those adverts where a bunch of disembodied female hands (you can tell because nail polish) are rubbing down a dude that just used aftershave? Yeah, totally the dude that is the selling point.
A woman has two choices during pregnancy. Abortion, or carrying to term. Adoption is up to either parent, a woman cannot put a child up for adoption unilaterally unless she is a single mother. Men who become pregnant have the same two choices. After a child is born, there is a child to care for, so options all around are limited.
Hum. Isn’t it odd that a majority of men legislate the reproductive health of women. Must be misandry.
Take a look here. For unmarried parents, the law gives the child to the person who they know is related to the child. Ie, the mother. That mother has responsibilities for caring and raising the child. A father must establish paternity, and in doing so also gains rights and responsibilities towards the child. I fail to see what aspect of this process is unfair.
Again, mothers can’t opt for adoption unless they are the only known parent. After a child exists, parents have a responsibility towards them. What you’re asking is for a “get-out-of-care-free” card (only for men), while completely ignoring the child’s rights to care.
I know you only are talking about cis folks, so with that in mind, you think a male-only thing is orthodox while a women-only thing is unorthodox? The mind boggles.
Again with the foot-stamping. You keep mentioning these terrible, incomparable, wide-scale issues affecting men, but never demonstrate them. For a person who identifies as neither feminist or MRA, you sure do regurgitate the talking points of only one side with great regularity.
</gallop>
Dude you’ve clearly dedicated loads of time to memorizing and regurgitating MRA talking points and yet reading about patriarchy is too hard for you? Cry me a river.
That’s right, naill. Avoid the hard questions and ignore your obvious errors. That’ll throw everyone off.
Dude, you said this:
We have scroll wheels, you know.
I vote that we make Niall explain what he thinks radical feminism is before we answer any of his questions.
False dichotomy: either patriarchy is solely beneficial for those it positions as its subjects (men) or it doesn’t exist at all. But patriarchy is a system of exploitation of non-men by men, so the imperfect aspects of patriarchy don’t contradict the foundation of oppression that patriarchy rests on.
@niall:
Don’t blame fromafar for responding to a point you brought up.
@ niall
Nice goal post shifting there. Why were you trying to make it sound like sexual objectification of men and women is equivalent then? What was your point in even trying to make it seem like adverts were fair and gender balanced?
And do you really not understand the social impact images like that have on consumers? I thought you studied sociology?
So we can add ‘objectification’ to the ever growing list of things you don’t understand.
@Cassandra:
A little late, but I’ll second that. I’m pretty curious what he’s talking about when he says “radical feminism.”
Hell, even capitalism, a political and economic system that serves the interests of the bourgeosie at the expense of the proletariat, isn’t perfect for bourgeosie. After all, with the high status in wealth comes an implicit possibility of losing it, and ubiquitous commodification and consumerism that comes with capitalism can have a negative impact on the quality of life even for rich people. But none of that changes the fact that being rich and having people work for you is a lot more privileged and cozy than constantly working just to survive.