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.
Oh, I thought it was either shopped, or that they volunteered but didn’t like the way it felt or something, or that it was curious and came up itself. There goes my optimism.
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No!!!!!!!!!!
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I refreshed too, before I commented. 🙁
so close.
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@gillyrosebee, just wanted to say, so much of what you said in this thread ran through my mind too, but there’s no way I could have expressed it as well. Thank you!
@cassandrakitty – ditto on the Miyazaki image. Very Ponyo-esque. And just to add my two cents, I’m still in complete agreement with you (with what you’ve posted in this thread), not sure if that helps with choosing to stick around. Have some cyber-Gatorade!
As for everything else, I’m just going to leave it alone; people far more articulate and kind than I am have already posted.
Fucksticks! D’youknow, as soon as I posted it, I was like, that’s going to cause issues. Being supremely naive and stupid I thought it was probably photoshopped. I’m sorry. I spend half my life on here apologising. For doing stupid naive shit. I am sorry. I should have looked closer into the origins as I half suspected it was bollocks*.
*From what I’ve gathered we are now allowed to use words that involve body parts? I understand a gendered slur is different (for example my partner referred to someone as ‘twatty dickface’ earlier, my first thought was that this wouldn’t stand on WHTM!)
If we’re gonna talk about serious things again, I’m gonna qupte gillyrosebee for saying exactly what bothered me the most about this whole thing:
This, to me, is the outgrowth of an issue common to pretty much every ideological community, the idea that your stance is so obviously the right one that anyone who doesn’t agree either doesn’t understand or is disagreeing out of animus of some kind.
When it comes to minorities of any kind it’s especially easy to fall into that trap. When someone is used to people rejecting your arguments without considering them because of their own prejudices sometimes one can forget that sometimes the reason people don’t agree with you is not because they don’t understand, or because of some prejudice or other, it’s because they’ve considered your argument and don’t find it convincing.
Too right we are!
Especially when those arguments echo the ones used by the most dominant group of all – white dudes – to erode women’s boundaries.
I think this pretty much sums up the issues I’ve been having with the ways things were going here, which are hopefully now in the process of being resolved.
It’s the word “allowed”. Which I’m not blaming DaintyDougal for using, she’s been conditioned to react that way, as has everyone else here (other than the coven of dissenting witches for whom the conditioning didn’t take). And the thing is, it’s not just Ally’s fault that that happened – it takes a whole bunch of people to create a social dynamic that messed up, where people feel like they need to ask if they’re “allowed” to say things rather than simply having it pointed out if they’ve said something hurtful and then establishing a consensus that maybe there might be a problem with that term and thus it’s best avoided. Being considerate towards other people is a very good thing, trying to be decent people is mandatory for any community worth participating in. But when a bunch of grown women on a feminist site are tiptoeing around meekly asking for permission to use certain commonly used words and engaging in public self-flagellation if they used a word that they hadn’t previously realized was on the forbidden list (which was being updated daily by that point) then something has gone very wrong, and fixing is everyone’s responsibility.
The public self-flagellation is another part that appalled me. It was like people had to grovel – or felt they did – for merely using a word that had suddenly become verboten according to one person (scrotosphere, for example). It was arbitrary and it was escalating on the nothing you do will be good enough, you’ll never be a really acceptable ally scale. And that’s abusive behaviour.
Buggrit, got to dash for the train. Later, y’all.
“What happened to Steve Irwin has meant I am more nervous about rays than sharks. However, I also have a policy of not annoying animals.”
No need to be afraid of rays, that was a truly freak accident. A very sad one, but nothing resembling common. Rays are usually peaceful, even playful — it’s why I thought that pic was a ray being a goof. They do exactly that up the sides of touch tanks if you pet them in a way they like (always go with the grain, nose to tail, and stop where the ray starts to narrow).
Too bad that the pic is the result of assholery and not a ray being a goof, because they really are awesome creatures (and, afaik, wing is correct)
@ daintydougal
I’m glad you asked the question. “Sad boner” and “boner update” always crack me up and I’d hate to lose those terms.
@ Argenti
That’s so cool!
Yeah, I remember I was at a touch tank last summer and one of the rays I’d pet turned around and then swam right up into my hand! My then-boyfriend thought I was just being silly when I was like, “It WANTS me to pet it!” Turns out I was right? lol
Well, while I’m here. I’ve felt for a long time that my experiences aren’t important/relevant due to all my privilege (for example a whole car full of guys screamed obscenities at me the other day. Thanks cis privilege!) but I know if I was trans and anything other than white I’d get a lot worse, so the feelings I had/have aren’t…correct? I know nobody would mean it that way, but that’s how it felt.
That was exactly the message coming through, daintydougal. I’d once have said it was unintentional, but in the last few weeks, no, I would say it was part of a pattern of Look At Me, Look At Me.
Yeah, the whole thing was starting to remind me why I bailed on Shakesville.