If the Men’s Rights movement is looking for a celebrity endorser, I think I’ve found just the guy for them: the mixed martial arts fighter, and erstwhile porn actor, War Machine, currently sitting in jail on charges of brutally beating and attempting to kill his ex-girlfriend, porn star Christy Mack.
Men’s Rights activists should be able to look past these criminal charges; after all, as they remind us all the time, women are forever falsely accusing innocent men of all sorts of terrible things.
And in so many ways War Machine is perfect for them. An MMA fighter, he’s already only one letter away from being an MRA. A misogynistic asshole with rage issues, he’ll have no trouble fitting in with the Men’s Rights crowd. And, especialy important for a movement that has a lot of trouble getting any good PR, he’s a bit more comfortable on camera than the Paul Elams and Dean Esmays of the world, with experience on television (on the reality show The Ultimate Fighter: Team Hughes vs. Team Serra), and in seven films (albeit pornographic ones).
Best of all: he’ll need no ideological education from what A Voice for Men likes to call Fuck Shit Up University. War Machine – real name Jonathan Koppenhaver – is already an outspoken proponent of many of the Men’s Rights Movement’s core beliefs.
Consider these selections from a little Men’s Rights manifesto War Machine wrote a few years ago during a previous stint behind bars, serving time for felony assault after two bloody bar fights. His rant, which a friend posted to the internet, would fit right in with the sort of stuff we’ve seen regularly posted on the Men’s Rights subreddit, or The Spearhead, or A Voice for Men. I’ve bolded some of the Men’s Rightsiest bits:
The oppression of MEN is worse than oppression of Jews in Nazi germany, worse than the slavery of Blacks in early America…
There has always been the oppressor and always the oppressed. Before, it was blatant … NOW the oppressor has learned to disguise his evil. You can see man, but you can not see MEN. How easy it is to oppress a minority that is invisible to the eye! How genius of the oppressor! And what a better target too! …
Men challenge injustice from Government, MEN fight for their Constitutional rights, that are slowly being taken away every year. …
And they don’t just oppress us by making more laws and taking away more freedom, they are far more clever than that! Ask yourself what your REAL dream was?? If you gave up on this dream, why? Because of the brainwashing of the Government, that’s why! They taught you to “play it safe.” They told us a responsible man has ONE wife, a house, good credit, good job, and kids. How are you supposed to chase your dreams while maintaining all of that!?
Men are supposed to take risks and be aggressive! What accomplishments have ever come of a man scared to risk it all!? None!? Where would the world be? Still ‘flat!’ Still ‘Earth at the center of the universe!’
If any of you have your Men’s Rights Bingo cards out, I’m guessing you might already be close to scoring a bingo. We’ve got a comparison to slavery that could have come straight from the pages of A Voice for Men, a marriage-is-death-to-male-dreams rant that could have been borrowed from any MGTOW forum, and an evo-psych-esque argument that men are the true risk-takers and the world’s real innovators.
And I don’t think War Machine would have much trouble with Paul Elam’s “Bash a Violent Bitch Month,” either.
[I]t’s Christmas day and I’m laying in my bunk wondering “Why in the hell do American men get married!?” … If your wife is being a bitch you can’t slap her, if your wife is yelling at you, God forbid you yell back … Next thing you know it will be illegal to fuck your wife! LMAO! Maybe then, MEN in this country will get the fucking hint and MOVE! This country forces you to be a bitch!
In another online posting, War Machine touched on another Men’s Rights hobbyhorse, the notion that the justice system is stacked against men:
[L]ook at the prisons, they are FULL of MEN, not women. Are men “evil” and women not? Or do the laws target and attempt to restrict NATURAL MEN’S BEHAVIOR? How many of the HEROES in American history would avoid prison if they lived today? Davey Crockett? Thomas Jefferson? David Bowie? General Grant & General Lee? Shit, George Washington. … Laws target MEN and men’s behavior. Women want to bitch and cry about their rights and equality… LMAO! MEN are the ones locked away like animals, while women run free!
Someone might have to explain to War Machine that David Bowie is not actually a famous American HERO but a famously androgynous British musician who once recorded an album called “Heroes.” (Mr. Machine may be thinking of James Bowie, a well-known 19th century American frontiersman and slave trader, and the guy the Bowie Knife is named after.)
But other than that, he seems ready to go.
There is, of course, that whole attempted murder charge to deal with.
It’s true the Men’s Rights Movement has had few problems in the past rallying behind men with histories of violence. But War Machine might be a harder sell as a Men’s Rights hero. His alleged attack on Mack left her with a cracked rib, a ruptured liver, numerous broken bones, missing teeth and her eyes swollen shut. (See here for photos of her injuries; obviously this link is NSFW and could be triggering.)
While Mr. Machine denies attacking Mack, he joked to a TV host last year that if she were to leave him “I would just kill her” and get a tattoo saying “Rest In Peace” above the tattoo of her name he has on his neck.
And several hours after allegedly trying to murder her, War Machine tweeted this lovely message about his ex:
https://twitter.com/WarMachine170/statuses/497663075831787521
War Machine does seem to be at a low point in his life. Even aside from the charges he faces, and the time he seems likely to serve, his career in porn is almost certainly over. The “Alpha Male” clothing line he helped start wants nothing to do with him. Nobody but the prison system seems to want this guy.
In other words: Men’s Rights activists, this is your chance! War Machine may not be the, er, hero you want. But he’s certainly the hero you deserve.
Inquiring minds want to know…
How many posts did he make prior to finally figuring out he had to meet the challenge?
There only seem to be two in the pending list. I haven’t looked at the trash to see if David turfed any others.
GrumpyOldMan: Nothing silly about the response; we just have a minor disagreement about the strength of the response — we men didn’t really feel that she intended to offend, that’s all.
You can’t say that. You don’t know what, “we men” feel on the subject. Unless someone chimes in, you can’t even make an inference about their opinions on the subject. It’s possible there were men who shared the opinion, but didn’t want to turn it into a dogpile, because the idea of amity was more important than the need to put their own two-cents into the matter.
It’s possible all the men here were 100 percent behind her, and to nervous about turning things into a heated debate on something which didn’t merit getting people riled up when it seemed to be solved.
You don’t know.
Off to shop for Musical Instruments in Dublin.
Well, for what it’s worth, I personally thought Ally’s posts were no big deal and didn’t deserve further negative comment (everybody needs to vent now and then), but I kinda did appreciate the posts protesting her attitude, if that makes sense?
@octo
I have to agree that Ally’s post wasn’t a big deal (at least to me). It was clear she was venting because of fear, sort of like we use the “male tears” meme in frustration. It did surprise me that no one actually realized they were tone policing her, essentially saying “can you be less rude to your oppressors please?”. That was disappointing to me, because I’ve always liked to read WHTM and I didn’t expect to see that argument here.
But you are right. One of the things I appreciate in feminist spaces are the chance we get to politely correct one another, so we can create a more inclusive and welcoming space. We need to be open to criticism, and she did seem to take it gracefully. It should have ended there.
@Auntie Alias and the AVFM suicide policy
Yes, copypasting a generic message is an assholish thing to do, but the policy of telling them to get help offline and in the real world is the only reasonable policy for a message board and the only way to actually help somebody with a clinical depression or other mental health issues that require medical treatment.
For less severe cases, that policy is totally overblown, but I do understand that he is trying to be on the safe side of his nation’s legal system, what with the board being his pirmary source of income.
Yeah I am also going to say that I really don’t see what the issue is with Ally’s comments, and it sets my teeth on edge to see people jumping on a teenage trans girl who has been through horrendous abuse at the hands of men to police how she reacts to examples of male violence.
Women like Ally are the people that Feminism should be fighting hardest to protect and instead a group of us are telling her that she is being super mean for generalising men and telling her that “it is not about you”. Do we support trans girls or do we only support them when they are polite and palatable and nice?
We need to support them in their anger and their fear and their pain. They bear the brunt of male violence and they are 100% entitled to be scared of and angry at men because of this.
I think that people have treated her very poorly in this thread and it needs a little less policing of oppressed and abused peoples reaction to really scary things and a little more understanding that in the grand scheme of things comments like Ally’s do exactly squat to harm anyone but that toxic masculinity and male violence kills untold numbers of people.
Please tell me exactly how Ally’s comment has the power to hurt anyone? Who is hurt by it? And by hurt I mean more than “I feel a bit sad for being lumped in with abusers”.
This has literally just been an exercise in “not all men” but aimed at a teenaged trans lesbian of colour and it is frankly a bit rich for the people doing so to complain about being tone policed by the people objecting to this.
On another note, I am the regular that practices Kendo, but I will come back later to talk about it because I do not like how Ally has been treated in this thread and I am feeling very angry about it right now.
So yeah, those are my thoughts and this is me signing out.
Now I’m curious…what kind of dreams can’t be achieved because work, a place to live, money, financial stability, and a support network get in the way? Usually those things make it easier to realize a dream.
Unless the dream is to be a lazy, worthless, antisocial piece of shit.
I’m amused by the glaring contradiction in his view of men. Which is it: are men lawless, slope-browed, slavering beasts who can barely restrain themselves from raping and pillaging and other alpha male shit? Or are they refined, lofty thinkers and inventors and civilization-builders? You can’t have it both ways. He seems to be under the impression that the Founding Fathers and Ziggy Stardust were beating up porn stars and having cage matches in between writing the Gettysburg Address and building skyscrapers, thanks to the absence of pesky modern laws.
The Founding Fathers also didn’t bother with houses and families and incomes. Those are for the timid and the weak. Real men walk around in the forest punching things and inventing shit while women bring them sandwiches.
Historophilia’s comment above is better put than anything I could say about this situation. I agree with everything that she has said. There are many men I love and trust, but the power that they could choose to wield against women, particularly poor trans women of colour, really is terrifying.
I also want to back Ally up on her objections to the word “scrotosphere.” I am glad she was willing to risk getting push back so that she could explain to us why it is harmful. Associating both the maleness and the unpleasantness of MRAs with a body part that is shared by many trans women is transmisogynistic, and generally speaking this community is anti-misogyny. I can’t stop anyone from using that term, I can’t even remember if I’ve ever used it myself, but I will not use it from this point forward.
Seeing as Ally hasn’t commented in a while I don’t know why people feel they can speak for her.
I too am glad to learn about why seemingly benign things can be harmful and will not use any bodypart words unless specifically talking about bodyparts. If I’m called out I apologise and learn and do better. Learning is good yo.
Actually, I like saying butts. And I sometimes still refer to this site as manboobs. BUTTS AND BOOBS FOREVZ! MUHAHAHAHAHHAA
I wasn’t going to weigh in on this but I’m gonna now.
If someone of color said to me, “White people are terrifying”, I’d agree with them. I wouldn’t take it personally. It’s true. No, not every single white person is racist scum, but the non-racists and racism apologists looks just like the racists. Not every white person has power over the lives of people of color, but enough of them do and enough of them abuse that power that I feel that it is perfectly reasonable to think white folks are scary. Even if only one of us shoots you, 50 more will be along shortly to make excuses for why they did it and even more of us will just not care what happens to you. It’s punching up to say so. I don’t see anything different about Ally’s comment about men. In fact, I nodded when I read it because in the context of a man beating a woman half to death and many other men defending him online, I was also thinking how fucking scary that is and how much in common men’s responses to violent misogyny have with white people’s responses to violent racism. Whatever white people do to black people and whatever men do to women, the black people and the women (and woe be it to black women) will deserve it in the eyes of so many men and white people.
It’s OK to be afraid of those people who may very well kill you or excuse or respond with indifference to the person who does.
…and between a straight, white, cis lady and an lesbian, trans, woman of color, one of us has so much more reason to be afraid of men than the other.
Hint: It isn’t me.
What Lea said.
And that’s all I really have to add.
I did that slow nod myself, since I knew about Ally’s background, and I’m afraid of other men sometimes too (despite being a rather large cis man myself).
Ok, I am not fond of dog-piles personally, unless it’s either a very obvious attack or I feel I have anything different to contribute. Dog-piles tend to turn mole-hill complaints into mountains, and can be tough de-escalate. It’s why I tend to go quiet when that happens.
I highly value Ally and her contributions here, so while I disagreed with her logic, I didn’t feel it was a strong enough disagreement to risk the strong possibility of me cisplaining.
For whatever it’s worth, here’s my purely personal opinion: I think “Men scare me” has much worse implications for transwomen than the use of “scrotosphere” has for transmen. “Men scare me” is the underlying emotional rational of the women who campaign against appropriate bathroom access for transwomen: The fear that transwomen are deviant men trying to infiltrate women’s spaces.
The other is specifically referencing a subset of men who place overwhelming stock in the male privilege granted by being born with that body part. It’s still has tones of body shaming which I’m mildly uncomfortable with, purely on a principal of “body shaming is bad”, but I don’t see exactly how that particular phrase specifically or especially targets transmen as a class.
And yes, that’s totally cis privilege talking to trans experience, and I am not comfortable with that at all.
Aside from that I don’t take “men scare me” personally for the same reason Lea said above.
And just the other day I was trying to point out how MRM rants about the sub-humanness of women sound like something out of Chimpfree or Stormfront with the names swapped out.
I’ve noticed that, too. To hear some MRAs rant about it, you’d think women in general were from the planet Xyzzy and had three heads.
Buttercup:
IDK about lazy, but obviously he feels persecuted because people see him as a violent asshole. He might also feel persecuted because his MMA/porn career and general lifestyle and cultural markers are labeled “thuggish” and “lower-class” regardless of how much money he makes. But mostly it’s about him being a violent asshole.
So he thinks, “If I had a college degree and paper-pushing job and six-figure income and stereotypical middle-class lifestyle (which involves not being a violent asshole), the people would RESPECT me properly. I don’t want that, and it must be because I’m a MAN and men are really like me. Society hates men who live true to themselves.”
That “ONE wife” bit probably doesn’t mean he dreams of legal polygamy, more likely he resents that he’s been called out for habitual cheating.
>Now I’m curious…what kind of dreams can’t be achieved because work, a place to live, money, financial stability, and a support network get in the way? Usually those things make it easier to realize a dream.
He sounds like he apires to be a comic book hero like Batman, Conan or Tarzan.
OK, this comment I can’t just let slide. The brunt of male violence against women is within the family and in intimate relationships. There are situations where it shifts to another class of women (during slavery or colonial occupation, or during war, for example, and sex workers are almost always targeted for an extra level of violence by men), but even then the violence against women within their own homes doesn’t go away, and that means that the women in the underclass face violence from their racial oppressors/soldiers and from the men in their own families and communities. We’re feminists, we’re supposed to know this. What does that mean? Well, it means that the brunt of male violence has always ended up being aimed at the women and girls who they live with (wives, daughters, sisters, girlfriends), most of whom are cis. Don’t erase those women. There are quite literally billions of them. You don’t even have to erase them, in order to make the point that trans women also face violence from men, so why are you doing so?
@Kakanian
What bothered me most was prohibiting people from even expressing sympathy to a suicidal person.
Arctic Ape – Could be. The guy reeks of narcissism and a victim complex, so it’s not surprising he would try to denigrate men who don’t resemble him, and blame society for holding him down. It’s just odd to hear someone complain that things like a wife, good job, adult responsibilities, and the legal system are stumbling blocks to achieving “REAL” dreams. Lots of people manage to achieve great things despite not living in a lawless, unregulated libertarian bachelor paradise – indeed, BECAUSE they don’t.
God forbid even more you have a rational, grownup conversation with her.
What are these “natural men’s behavior” landing them in jail? What is the “male sexuality” that the MRAs is always saying is being criminalized? They always justify the abuse of women by dehumanizing men to nothing but mindless animals. It’s like they hate everybody.
Yeah, War Machine, “REAL” dreams, like multiple assault charges, meaningless sex with total strangers, and what must be an astronomical bar tab.
Actually having friends, family, and responsibilities seems so much more fulfilling to me, but I’m a total beta sap, so what do I know?