So my post on Aaron Clarey’s Return of Kings call for a boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road went a bit viral last week, garnering thousands of shares and retweets on social media and inspiring dozens of articles on sites ranging from The Mary Sue to the Guardian and even the Daily Mail, all helping to expose the manly men of the manosphere as the entitled manbabies they are, so threatened by women with power that the very thought of Charlize Theron as a badass postapocalyptic road warrior causes them to lose their collective shit.
Their “boycott” is a bit of a failure as well, to say the least. The film — which so far has garnered an impressive 98% of positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes — took in close to $17 million at the box office on Friday (in North America), and is expected to earn more than $40 million this weekend alone.
Admittedly, one movie did do better than Fury Road on Friday, but I somehow doubt this will be much of a consolation to Clarey and the rest of the Return of Kings crowd, given that the movie is Pitch Perfect 2, a musical comedy about an all-female a capella group whose breakout star is — to use the parlance of the manosphere — a fat chick. The horror!
Or maybe I’m wrong, and all the Fury Road boycotters went to Pitch Perfect 2 instead.
Anyway, over at Return of Kings, site founder and rape legalization proponent Roosh Valizadeh is proclaiming victory:
Even though we were incorrectly identified as a men’s rights site, the idea that Hollywood is spreading feminist propaganda has for the first time reached the ossified brains of over one million new people this week, perhaps more. Most of these individuals will never allow themselves to accept how unnatural and phony it is to have female heroes who are as strong as men, but a few of them will encounter another movie in the future that portrays women as so comically masculine that they can’t help but remember the site with the word Kings in the title that described that very phenomenon.
Aw, fellas, can’t you see that the joke is on you?
Perhaps this song with help:
I swear, I should probably post this video every other day.
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
What gets me about the men who want to boycott the new Mad Max film is that they remind me very much of the men in Cherry 2000.
This was a film where the main male character was a MGTOW who broke his sexbot and had to go to the Badlands to get a new one. The women in that film were portrayed exactly as the Manosphere describe them.
The irony of that is that Cherry 2000 features a badass female character who was actually stronger than the male hero played by Melanie Griffith.
Love the BeeGees video. So appropriate for the entire MRA movement.
“Our very important message got to a million more people because of this! I’m sure 100% of them will agree with us about women being inferior!”
Ah, Roosh. So naive. So hateful.
And so damn hairy too, I mean goddamn
Is there anyone these guys won’t insult while trying to get their ‘message’ out? Seems a bit self-defeating to me. Also, “ossified brains” comes off as weapons-grade projection.
It’s like they think rejecting the label will magically remove any appearance of bias, as though their positions are just something impartial people would come to. It’s a ridiculous tactic that no one buys.
Conversely, I’d absolutely love to see someone on a redpill subreddit express concern over unequal representation of women in media/gaming whilst adamantly denying any associations with feminism or SJWs. Heads would kerplode.
OT aside to any lurking MRAs (and anyone else who’s confused about the term “toxic masculinity”):
http://mosaicscience.com/story/male-suicide
The tendencies that lead to such large gender disparities in suicide rates (the need for complete mastery at all times, feelings of worthlessness if failing as “the provider”, men as psychic/emotional islands, etc) are a large part of what feminists mean when they reference toxic masculinity.
We don’t mean that MEN or even MASCULINITY are intrinsically toxic or harmful, but that so many of the absolutes set by society as THE defining, pass/fail characteristics of masculinity are bunk and harmful to men and boys.
/OT
Whenever I hear MRAs or PUAs complain about being confused for one another I think of Life of Brian.
https://youtu.be/gb_qHP7VaZE
I just saw this movie and it is AMAZING. Behind the amped-up sound effects and the bone-jarring physicality of the brilliantly choreographed action scenes, the film subverts patriarchal tropes in a big way. To avoid spoilers I’ll forego detailed discussion and just list the tropes that got their asses kicked out of high-speed vehicles:
-The story makes it clear that a woman picking up a gun is not in itself feminism.
-The movie exposes the ugly truth about manpain, big time. Manpain is related to the woman in the fridge trope, but I think thingswithwings’ brilliant discussion is far more on the mark for this story.
-The damsel in distress trope is not only subverted throughout but mocked hard.
There are others that I won’t mention for fear of spoilers. Just go see this film. See it twice. You won’t regret it.
(I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is sensitive to loud noises or could have seizures triggered by rapid screen sequences. This thing is frenetic, and LOUD. I was grateful throughout for my noise-reducing earplugs. If you need them like I do in theaters, wear them.)
Oh, oh, and also the movie discusses the exploitation and enslavement of women AND men. And also has oodles on toxic masculinity and how it harms men. I can’t wait for the manosphere to break its joke of a boycott and try to trash a movie that shows how men have common cause with women against patriarchy. They will try, and flail around knotting themselves into contradictions. And we’ll be right here pointing and laughing.
I keep wishing I could ‘like’ comments here 🙂 Esp the People’s front of Judea
In my experience, reactionary people use words like they’re magical incantations. They say “I didn’t mean it that way” and you’re supposed to go “oh, alright then” and not think any further about it.
An example is Sam Harris advocating for profiling people who “look Muslim” at airport security. A bunch of people pointed out that that’s racist because “look Muslim” is a meaningless phrase unless you’re talking about race. He edited his post and, with an almost wounded tone, insisted that of course he didn’t mean to profile people by race. Visit the comments section of any article criticizing that post and you’ll find dozens of Harrison fanboiz insisting “guys, he totally said he didn’t mean to profile by race”.
I think it comes from just a really superficial understanding of the positions they claim to hold. They don’t consider the implications of their words because if they follow their own logic through they’ll find them appalling and/or contradictory of other positions they’ve taken. They’re also quite happy to let someone like Harris lead them around by the nose with that kind of verbal hocus pocus.
There are videos on YouTube made by antifeminists/Mras to cry about the film
https://m.youtube.com/results?q=mad%20max%20fury%20road%20feminist&sm=3
Game devs take note: MrRepzion and MundaneMatt both loved this movie; most of their supporters seemed to agree in the comments. To them, feminism is about women telling them they can’t have everything they want, so they just can’t see it in a movie that gives them all the action they could ask for. I bet the same will hold true for games.
Are they claming that women cant kill men….i real life and in a movie?
I’m impressed by the number of publications that took note of Clarey’s (& Co.) temper mantrum and properly ridiculed it. Of course the delusional, reality-averse manbabies will say it’s a triumph, just like Doosh’s skewering by Dr. Oz, or Mike B’s ‘political victory’ in Britain were ‘wins’ for the Misogynist Rape Advocates.
Sorry (not really), guys, they / we are laughing AT you, not with you — and that includes George Miller and everyone involved in the production of the movie. And these guys are laughing all the way to the bank, thanks, in a tiny measure, to this inane display of your impotent misogynist rage.
On a related note, I’ve not seen a Mad Max movie, but will most definitely watch this one.
Temper mantrum 😀 Good one, Aunt Edna!
Re: PUA / MGTOW offended by being lumped with the MRA and the other way around
We say potato, they say potato.
It’s their classic (and stupid) deflection technique meant to muddy the waters. It makes little difference how they self-identify, given that they all espouse redpillian misogyny.
Thank you, thank you very much, WWTH. 🙂
I don’t believe I deserve the credit, though, as I’m fairly certain I saw others use the term somewhere (maybe even here).
Delusion strengthening…
I recommend the cover of “I Started a Joke” by scarling. Ladies singing the song would rustle their jimmies further 😀
So I just saw Mad Max and there was not a second of it that wasn’t awesome. Up yours, MRAs.
Ha, I hope they continue their boycott. All they’ve accomplished is make themselves look ridiculous and encourage more people to see it.
@fruitloopsie
I took a look at those videos to lap up their tears, came across this ‘gem’ in the comments of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJOhqkfmrF8
“Maybe she will turn out to be a character men can still identify with…just with tits. A real hero with principals, balls and conviction enacted with decisive action. Men can identify with the character while playing towards women’s envy of men by allowing them the fantasy that they are or can be men too if they want. Win-win.”
Like, no way! Men can identify with a female character!? It’s almost like they’re the same species!
#NotAllMRAs.
I wonder how the MRAs feel about Roosh, et al, distancing themselves from The Cause. If they had any sense, they’d be relieved. Of course, in that case they wouldn’t BE MRAs.