Over on Reddit, a regular on the Blue Pill subreddit — devoted to mocking Red Pill ridiculousness — recently reposted the cartoon above, one of The Onion’s brilliant parodies of the terrible political cartoons that are pretty much omnipresent in every second-string newspaper in the country. I don’t think I’ve ever posted it here before — I’m not sure I ever saw it until today — so I thought I’d share it here as well.
What makes this particular cartoon extra delicious is that its “argument,” such as it is, is one that a lot of Men’s Rights Activists actually believe. Indeed, it calls to mind the cover of the revised ebook edition of Warren Farrell‘s seminal MRA manifesto The Myth of Male Power, in which a picture of a woman’s posterior is presented as if it truly is, somehow, a threat to the rights of men:
Hell, as you can see, that woman’s butt is literally shattering the word “power.” The only question in my mind is whether the butt-damage was caused by some overenthusiastic twerking, or by a particularly powerful fart.
But Farrell — who is essentially the Founding Father of the Men’s Rights movement — didn’t mean it as a joke. As he explained in the new introduction to his book, he intended the cover to highlight the power “genetic celebrities” — his term for attractive women — have over hapless horny men:
When asked about the cover in a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread, Farrell doubled down:
MRA’s: when the arguments of your most famous “intellectual” are indistinguishable from a parody editorial cartoon in The Onion, it might be time to rethink your whole movement.
🙂
I’d have probably found something about his body to pick at in return, and started doing so every time he started picking at me. Really bring home the idea of why that’s not an appropriate thing to do, you know? Sounds like his equally stupid little friends probably put him up to it.
I’ve been lucky enough not to encounter many guys like that, though. The only one who did, well, let’s just say he soon discovered that if you annoy women to the point where we’re actually willing to be nasty about men’s bodies our superior verbal skills make that a battle the dudes will never win.
totallyalphadudebro
Yuppers. Misogyny in a nutshell.
kirbywarp, LOL!
fit-to-flip – yup, Farrell claimed that because the fathers who committed incest had happy feels about it, the daughters they’d raped must be lying liars who lie when they reported not being happy about it. David has a post about it in the archives, you can probably find it by searching “Farrell” if your gag reflex is particularly strong today. iirc it got a lot of trolls in the comments.
Nice! I need to find a way to work this into conversation.
True that. Farts can earn you the wrath of the furrinati. Whenever I audibly fart while in the same room as Darrow he wakes from his slumber and gives me a dirty look.
But only across the 8th dimension…
Apart from anything else, Farrel’s logic there is flawed even if you ignore the misogyny. If I rob a bank, that may well be all kinds of fun for me, and I may feel good about it afterwards, but the tellers who I pointed a gun at are unlikely to agree, you know?
Well, as I was younger and less gutsy at the time, I had to settle for just saying “Look, J, I don’t pick on YOUR body, even though I could if I wanted to. I just don’t want to. Why do you want to do this to me?” He never did come out with a satisfactory answer to that one, so maybe it WAS his buddies, as you say.
He even tried to make out like he was doing it for the good of my health, which I knew even then was utter bunkum. I come from a long-lived family on both sides, and my maternal grandma, whose butt I inherited, lived to be over 90. And did NOT die of a big ol’ butt, because that’s not a killer disease (although it certainly can be a killer look, if one knows how to dress it well.)
@ Bina
You may just be nicer than me, too. That’s definitely a possibility. The health thing is such bullshit though, healthwise having fat on your hips/thighs/butt has pretty much no danger attached at all, it’s stomach fat that can be a problem. Big butts aren’t fatal.
(Unless you decide to suffocate rude people with them, and really, who could blame you?)
Same here. Mads is most offended when I fart. I tell her she should save her offence for Fribbie; hers may be silent by they are weapons of sinus destruction.
No, she has to worry about people feeling she deserves to be physically hurt and/or emotionally humiliated because she didn’t respond nice enough, or honestly enough, or firm enough or whatever way that could have avoided said physical or emotional attack. And hey, the woman in the scenario doesn’t even get the choice to not be put in that situation to reject someone. The man in the scenario gets to reject all women he doesn’t want without having to do anything at all.
Superiour verbal skills?
“In every power of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.” (Northanger Abbey)
I feel like this clip is relevant, again.
I am thinking a woman in a bustle would reduce this d00d to a puddle of gelatinous protoplasm, eh?
Which is apparently now illegal in british porn, according to The Mary Sue.
Murder by suffocation, or having a big butt? Wouldn’t surprise me if it was the latter after the Australian nonsense about how naked vulvas are OK as long as the labia are small.
So what Warren means is that men think with their dicks. As a man myself I think it’s really, really sexist.
Also that completely neutered the supposed superiority of male on female argument that PUA and MRA promote. Oh the irony…
BTW, there exists a copy of that Louis CK sketch laid over that picture of David who is also somehow Michael Moore whipping himself. So, yeah, apparently that routine really offended the misters.
Say what?!
That sketch is hilarious and sad at the same time.
While Farrell is (snicker) MRAdom’s leading intellectual light, the butt quote definitely takes the TeRPy view that all aspects of social science should be based on the dating struggles of the modern Western male. Let’s pretend that wage gap inequality originated because guys need all that extra cash to score pricy dates with hot chicks, rather then position men as the sole financial providers and unquestioned heads of the household. Let’s also pretend single men freely asking single women out on dates is the eternal social norm.
Also, sorry Dr. Warren Dr. Farrell, PhD, you fail at selling “genetic celebrities” as academic speak for hot chicks.
TeRPer’s Guide to Key Historical Ages: 1) the age of rapey caveman keeping women in their place 2) the age of modern male oppression, when hot stuck-up bitches can turn guys down even when they really, really want to go out with them, because women can now date whomever they want 3) the age of post-apocolypse STEMlords, who will get back to keeping women in their place.
Everything not directly related to dating and hot chicks has no place in social analysis.
That would be SO worth seeing! I’d totally wear a bustle if it melted misogynists.
WWTH – I don’t remember the details, something about what’s allowed in porn. I think Kim told us about it?
Apparently in Australia vulvas are being edited into tiny-ness in porn during post-production because whoever is in charge of censorship there decided that they were less obscene than a more expansive ladygarden? I don’t have any links to hand, sorry, just remember reading about it and going “oh, come on, ffs”.
My wife failed to recognise her first husband when they bumped into each other recently.
True, they hadn’t seen each other in nearly twenty years, but when telling me about it later she sounded very impressed about how she’d managed to blank him from her memory so completely.
(Although another reason was similar to yours: he’d aged a lot more than she had.)
Do men ever get sick of being portrayed as these useless lumps that succumb to their biological urges no matter what their brain is telling them?
I swear, if I was a guy I’d be pretty annoyed at that summation of the male gender.
This might be his source of analysis?