Men’s Rights Activists have become known, not without reason, as belligerent assholes whose main forms of “activism” consist of harassment and threats.
One bold Men’s Rights Redditor known as El Rellok thinks he’s come up with a way to counteract this perception and deliver a powerful men’s-rightsty message at the same time.
He wants MRAs to send feminists … pictures of bloody feathers. No, really.
Now, to most people, getting a bloody feather in your email inbox would seem to be the digital equivalent of having a bloody horse’s head left in your bed. But in El Rellok’s world it is a rational and reasonable way to express “outrage” at feminist evil, and anyone who might possibly think otherwise is by definition unreasonable.
Let’s let him explain, because I certainly can’t explain how sending pictures of bloody feathers to someone you hate could be construed as anything but threatening:
The idea that men are violent, rather then the primary victims of violence, is being used to discredit men’s issues.
Well, actually, what’s being used to discredit the so-called Men’s Rights Movement is the simple fact that its members don’t seem to know how to engage in any kind of “activism” besides harassing individual women.
It is glaringly obvious that we need a method of clearly expressing unbounded outrage that cannot be construed as a threat by any reasonable person.
I don’t know that expressing “unbounded outrage” is really the most important goal for any activist movement, but the part about saying things that aren’t threatening sounds good to me.
Gentlemen (and ladies) i propose The Red Feather Campaign.
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, why a feather?
None here should be unfamiliar with the “white feather girls”.[1] , one of the most craven and deplorable pro war campaigns in human history.
In case you aren’t completely up-to-date with all Men;s Rights hobbyhorses, he’s referring to the Order of the White Feather. Founded in Britain at the start of World War I, this was a group of women that hoped to shame men into enlisting by presenting them with white feathers, a symbol of cowardice.
Though the White Feather campaign happened literally a hundred years ago, at a time when the general public in Britain and elsewhere was rabidly pro-war, and thought it hardly won universal support from the suffragettes of the day, MRAs like El Rellok have turned it into a symbol of the intrinsic evil that lurks in the hearts of feminists today.
The white feather campaign was about mens obligation to sacrifice to women, a socially imposed gender role. Feminists, while declaring their total reprobation for all gendered roles, continue to demand that men sacrifice for women by ceding anything described as privilege, regardless of whether the “Privilege” is earned, a “Privilege” at all, or whether a society without the thing described as a “Privilege” can be understood as just ….
Sorry, I nodded off in the middle of that. He finally gets to the point:
SO, I propose we return to them their feathers covered in the blood of the men mercilessly and ruinously sacrificed to their agenda.
Well, he doesn’t mean this literally – he means PICTURES of feathers that look like they’re covered in blood – but we’ll get to that in a minute.
We make this present with the following message.
“This blood is not your blood. To think it is, is a refraction only of your narcissism. This is the blood of men, sacrificed to females, by females, for generation upon generation. When you speak of sacrifice, before our eyes flash visions of bayonets, within our nostrils the waft of trenches, our ears recall the scream of artillery coming to shred our bodies. That is what sacrifice means to men; agony, suffering, death. This feather is a reminder of your inhumanity towards men, your lack of compassion and understanding, and your hypocrisy in declaring gender roles obsolete while commanding men to fulfill the most destructive of all gender roles, the gender who gets sacrificed.”
I dunno about you, but this is creepy as fuck. And more than a little threatening.
Why this tactic? First, the consistent theme seen presented by SJW/feminists is that men are “Violent oppressors who refuse to compromise.” This meme makes clear that it is not us being oppressive, and that the compromise being asked is not just.
Yeah, sending women pictures of bloody feathers accompanied by an over-the-top mini-manifesto charging them with narcissism and cruelty and blaming them for all the death and misery of war (and who knows what else) is definitely going to convince the world that you’re not violent creeps.
By turning the oppression meme around upon the feminists, it creates equal footing in the debate space.
Yes, that’s right, he thinks the way to win the debate is to quite literally argue “nuh-uh, you are!”
Second, it supplants the current “MRA send death threats” meme. MRA’s do not send death threats, MRA’s send pictures of blood covered feathers.
I’m sorry, what?
MRA’s do not send death threats, MRA’s send pictures of blood covered feathers.
That’s what I thought you said. You people really don’t understand how PR works, do you?
If your message does not include said feather, that was not an MRA, as anyone who understands the MRA position would understand the symbolism and necessity of the red feather campaign.
Yes, that’s right, a woman getting El Rellok’s unhinged message along with a picture of a feather drenched in blood is going to say, ah, yes, this isn’t a threat. This is a Men’s Rights meme, and a perfectly rational conversation-starter on the important topic of why women deserve blame for all the wars in the world because a small number of women in Britain in World War I handed out feathers to men who weren’t enlisted.
Third, it allows us to fracture the feminist movement and more clearly identify those feminists who actually want equality and are just being blind, from those feminists who are actually misanderist (i use that term hesitantly, but as i have not had time to create a new term to describe my view of this branch of feminism, so it is necessary). If we can separate the equality feminists from the misandarists, then we can actually start working with reasonable people to begin wide scale social reform on gender issues.
Trust me, any woman who sees your message as anything but the unhinged rantings of a possibly dangerous crackpot is not any kind of feminist.
Depending upon the response I get here, the above shall be sent to AVFM with a proposal for a “Feather Drive” asking submissions of drawings of bloody feathers we can then use.
This, El Rellok’s concluding sentence, is also the first sentence of his that makes any kind of sense. This sounds right up A Voice for Men’s alley.
In a followup comment, directed at MRAs who weren’t completely convinced that sending pics of bloody feathers is the best way forward for the troubled Men’s Rights Movement, he added:
OK, There are multiple people Doxxing and sending threats to feminists (and others). We need a way to signify that this IS NOT US. We need a way to signify this IS NOT US while still sending a reply of some form. Sending death threats is not useful, and no, sending a picture of a feather with a message clearly stating it is about mens sacrafice is a threat only to people who would percieve any responce at all to be a threat. So unless you are saying we just need to grovel before our new feminist over lords, tell me what the hell else we do. DO you understand the concept that feminism is not simply going to go away if you ignore them? We need a symbol representing male disposability, to counter arguements that we are privilege defending mysoginists. And it needs to be a historically poinant one, or its not going to stick.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Also, have you ever heard of spellcheck?
I can’t be the only that gets really skeeved when these fuckwits refer to women as “females”. Like its just so gross specially since they never refer to men as “males”,
Good on those guys!
(The guys rescuing the ducklings, I mean.)
Oh my God. The misogyny, entitlement, ignorance and narcissism is just dripping off every sentence this person writes. And he considers himself a moderate? Or non-threatening? Is this the same guy that made that ridiculous MRA meme about women tricking men into providing and dying for them throughout history?
Why can’t they get it through their thick skulls that no one besides them is saying that men are naturally anything, but that the toxic male ideal that feminists talk about is learned behavior that can be unlearned? Pretty much all the bad things men experience in a patriarchal society (that MRAs call “misandry”) can be traced back to toxic masculinity. Solution: Get rid of toxic masculinity. But no, then the skidmarks start whining about how feminists want to “emasculate” men and “demonise natural male behavior”. God, they’re so stupid.
Also, why can’t MRAs learn to tell the difference between “some woman somewhere” and “all feminists everywhere”? Is it really misandry to expect them to stay in the same reality as the rest of us*?
*Trick question. “Misandry” does not exist in our reality. According to a highly dubious and unproven claim made by a fictional scientist, there have been traces of something called “misandry” in the speculative realm known as Misandria, but there, it just means “the state of existing”.
Ummmm, he does know that World War One wasn’t started by women, right?
seriously, are all MRA’s complete headcases?
While it’s amusing to riddicule their absurd logic I generally read this blog and occasionally PUA sites for the lulz, the Whole thing become a lot less funny when you realize that misogynists are terrorizing real people and how fucking unhinged they are.
claudiah: thanks for the ducklings:) much needed brain bleach.
On the plus side, most people who got a random picture of a bloody feather in their email would probably be more confused than terrorized.
Feminists, remember all the chickens you sacrificed for those white feathers!
“First they came for the chickens, an I did not speak out…”
Finally, a way to get birdsrightsactivist’s attention.
Now everyone can focus on the real issues.
birdsrightsactivist @ ProBirdRights
catsrighstactivist, I know was you! stop email me, we not frends. #notfunny #meancats
Won’t someone PLEASE think of the chickens!
@Jojo. No, it’s not just you. I don’t even call my animals females or males. They’re my girls and my boys.
@Thread: If someone sent me a picture of anything soaked in blood, I’d consider it a threat. And, just because some man somewhere did something, doesn’t mean that all men everywhere get to claim it.
“Refraction”? Is the narcissism being passed through a prism? Does it bend in water?
Hate to burst his ecstatic prose-bubble, but trenches don’t actually waft. They just sit there. They’re trenches.
Also, major eye-rolling over the argument that wars only exist because of men’s biological drive to impress women, with their insatiable cravings for more gold, more jewels, more land, more designer handbags, etc. It’s well known that Hitler only invaded the Netherlands because Eva wanted some clogs.
And women, as we all know, have historically had so much say in statecraft and diplomacy.
Oh, hey, I was in that thread! Albeit pointing out how terrible an idea it is and that anybody trying to figure out what the hell was going on would find an amateur writing site for vampire smut (seriously, google ‘bloody feather’ and tell me what pops up) than anything remotely related to the MRM.
Oh, MRA’s, we went over this when you thought holding a conference at a veteran’s hall made you veterans. Just because most war veterans are men, and you are also a man, doesn’t mean you automatically become a war veteran. You did not take part in World War I, Mr. El Rellok, so no, you do not deserve the respect that a World War I veteran receives. Just admit that you’re jealous of vets already, MRA’s. Probably because you’ve played too many war-glorifying vidya games and don’t realize how awful war actually is.
I just ADORE how he keeps referring to women as “females.” And by adore I mean hate. And by hate I mean despise. It’s always a mark of a class act right there.
“The white feather campaign was about mens obligation to sacrifice to
womentheir country, a socially imposedgenderpatriotic role.”FTFY.
So the translation is more or less:
“If someone doesn’t follow this exact formula we can declare them ‘No true Scotsman’ regardless of their own history and statements.”
As in “No true MRA would fail to send a picture of a bloody feather”? Yeah, I think that that’s what they mean. It’s kinda like how Elliot Rodger was “no true MRA,” but they also feel kinda sorry for him and get where he was coming from.
You know what would go a long way to fight the perception that MRAs doxx and threaten women? If MRAs would stop doxxing and threatening women. And, maybe, start referring to women as women (y’know, as people) instead of gendered slurs or feeeeemales.
What’s so hard about just using the word woman?
Typical MRA selfishness and laziness. They want to take credit for the inventions and sacrifices other men made without doing anything. They want feminists to do their activism work for them. They want people in oppressed groups to be allies to them but they don’t want to do the same and they want what they perceive as “victim privileges” without actually having to go through any actual oppression or victimization.
I’m pretty sure that all MRAs want is to be rewarded and admired for being mediocre or less.
Uhh, hey, MRM? Yeah, women are soldiers now. It has been the feminists that were fighting for women to be soldiers, while misogynists and patriarchal dudes were and still are fighting against women being soldiers. If you want to send blood-soaked feathers, send it to the guy in Canada who proclaimed that women in the military had no business “playing dress-up.” You know, if you don’t actually agree with him.
Also? You don’t get to claim veteran status without being a veteran yourself. If you seriously are having flashbacks to a war you never participated in, you’ve been playing too much Call of Duty.
They’re all “how do we make people stop thinking we’re evil?”, and everyone else is going “um, have you considered actually being less evil? might be worth a shot”.
@cassandrakitty:
“People think we send death threats? Well how about as a response we send something obviously threatening, then weave some bullshit into a fine bullshit quilt around it and claim anyone who sees the obviously threatening tone is stupid!”
“How about we just… I don’t know… not send the threatening part?”
“… You’ve lost me.”
Though the White Feather campaign happened literally a hundred years ago, at a time when the general public in Britain and elsewhere was rabidly pro-war,
Actually, no. I can’t speak for Britain, but there was a recent article by Conrad Heine in the Listener which looked at the White Feather campaign in NZ. IIRC, it never had majority support, and was perceived by many at home as being an annoyance from a bunch of stick-up-the-ass types – somewhat comparable to strident anti-abortion campaigners. The “rabidly pro-war” impression came from elite support and mythologising after the war – the hoi polloi were more ambivalent about it by far.
The ironic thing about the white feather campaign is that back then, it rustled the exact same jimmies – men who did not like the idea of the tables being turned, and women shaming and harrassing them in public (that was only for MEN to do to WOMEN). There was a lot of harrumphing from the old boy network about impertinence, audacity, the immodesty of women telling men what to do, and so on. When women started to get more directly involved in the war effort as ambulance drivers, nurses, and munitions makers, it became easier to make the case for suffrage and participation in public life.
Annnd fast forward 100 years, and a certain subset of men are *still* getting their sprinkles in a snit over the idea of women engaging in gender policing in public and telling men what to do. (Not that anyone should ever be engaging in gender policing, but it really seems to make these dudes unhappy that it’s becoming less socially unacceptable, and they can’t have the monopoly on it.)