Men’s Rights Redditors agree: it’s tough to be a man. Well, a cis man, in any case. And those silly trans people are making it worse.
On the Men’s Rights subreddit, one concerned fellow has discovered a possibly insurmountable obstacle standing in the way of true gender equality: A “Women’s Room” at the University of Queensland that, as a sign on its door notes, is open to “trans*, intersex and genderqueer people as well as cis-females.” The horror!
The title of his post: It’s hard to call for equality between genders when stuff like this is so openly accepted by places like Universities.
Naturally, this being the Men’s Rights subreddit, his post received more than a thousand upvotes, and inspired more than 300 comments. This will give you some of the flavor of the discussion:
![Does cis not mean straight? I can't keep up with the bullshit they make up. permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]lanternkeeper 40 points 1 day ago It means a person who identifies as the sex they were born; i.e. a man who is biologically male or a women who is biologically female aka regular people. I kind of feel dirty writing that. permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]Endless_Summer 44 points 1 day ago So I was born with a penis, but I can identify as a lesbian woman and be free to use this bathroom? permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]ThePunHunter 43 points 1 day ago Sure you can, and if people tell you otherwise, just tell 'em to check their privileges (because you have it really bad)! This world, man. permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]AlphaBetaOmegaGamma 2 points 1 day ago So what are you telling me is that SJWs and feminists make up shit to do whatever they want with no consequences? Damn, I'm impressed. permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]pepe_le_pewpewpewpew 30 points 1 day ago Sure, up until you saw this room, your gender was a social construct forced upon you by society, once you saw this sign you realized you were actually a woman all along. As soon as you left, evil social conditioning got the better of you again and you were socially obligated to identify as a man again. Damn you patriarchy! permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]Odz2427 1 point 1 day ago Fuckin' cissy permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]krudler5 6 points 1 day ago Isn't "cis" a recently-coined term? I can't recall having heard anyone use the term "cis-gender" before the last 3 or 4 years... permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]Elvick 11 points 1 day ago As the "opposite" of transgendered, it certainly is. I learned about Transgendered people in my early teens, I'm 26 now and I only started to hear "cisgendered" because feminists were using it to dismiss and insult men with it. lol The term should die, it serves no purpose other than to shame people.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/cis1.png?ssl=1)
The lovely DavidByron2 — one of the subreddit’s most, er, colorful commenters — gets nearly 300 upvotes for suggesting that the poor beleaguered cis man who posted the picture should sue the school for sexual harassment. Naturally, this brilliant legal mind doesn’t actually know what cis means; he thinks it means “straight.”
Elsewhere in the comments, one fellow suggests that a cis man should make a point of going into the room and telling anyone who wants him to leave that they’re not allowed to discriminate against their gender identity.
Naturally, others are enthusiastic about this idea.
![jimmywiddle 13 points 2 days ago Me too, I would real world troll the shit out of that room. I would turn up in an elf costume once and claim I identify as elf kind and therefore don't even qualify as human. permalinksaveparentgive gold [–]mariners77 -3 points 1 day ago And that's why people like you shouldn't be allowed. Nothing wrong with what the parent comment suggested. Go in there, be quiet, and tell people not to assume gender. But trolling just creates more hostilities between sides and makes things worse.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/cistroll.png?ssl=1)
Yes, that’s right: the person suggesting that it might not be such a good idea to put on an elf costume and crash a room intended as a “safer space” for women, trans, intersex and genderqueer folks is the one that’s voted down — though even he thinks that invading the safer space would be just peachy.
Yet another commenter tells someone who identifies as a “gender fluid male,” that he “should go and see a doctor if your genitals are leaking fluid.” The jokester gets upvotes; the gender fluid male, who says he goes to UQ and that he “understands why [the room] exists,” gets downvoted below zero.
And Men’s Rights activists wonder why so many people think of their little movement as a hate movement.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
@Sarity:
To forget the important parts of evolutionary theory, redneckCryonicist would have to have learned the important parts of evolutionary theory in the first place. I was wondering if this was likely ever to have happened for RNC…
…But my Magic 8-Ball said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
If they’re going to be protesting against the women’s room as not being a space they’re allowed into, then surely they’ve also reason to protest against things like staff rooms, student common rooms reserved to students of certain disciplines and so on? I mean, they’re being excluded from those spaces too – by reason of not being staff at the university, or not being a student in a particular discipline. Heck, they could get all upset because they’re being excluded from the student spaces at UQ by virtue of not being students there or not even being on the same damn continent and it’d have the same amount of moral force and justification.
Again, guys, what is it you want, and why do you think this particular tantrum is going to get it for you?
(Oh, and some Australian translations for our USAlien friends:
Toilet: room with stalls and sinks (and in the male version, urinals) designed for the purpose of elimination of bodily wastes.
Women’s Room: a space (usually peculiar to university settings) set aside as a “safe space” for women. Definition of “women” varies depending on how TERF-infested the women’s (student) collective at the university is this year. I have seen some where it’s “wombyn born wombyn only”. (Yes, it’s possible to lack a dick and yet be a dick).
Does this clear up the issue for our American friends?)
@RNC “organic sexual hierarchy” is one of the bullshit reasons assholes like to think my son isn’t a real man so please take that attitude and shove it. Who knows, it may dislodge your head from your ass in the process but I’m not holding my breath.
Crip Dyke-“When you complain that George fucking Miller doesn’t know anything about Mad Max, you’ve hit the mantle: even if you wanted to dig yourself a deeper hole, it’s just not possible.”
Yep, they have really hit rock bottom there. The ignorance of these people is astounding. Anyone else would have at least done a quick qoogle search on the background of this film to get the basic facts straight before spouting such crap. But this is way too difficult for them.
“the First Amendment in US jurisprudence doesn’t protect you from being fired by your private employer.”
Exactly. Even if this did happen in America, they still would have been fired. The First Amendment does not give people the right to behave like misogynistic arseholes with impunity. And it sure as hell does not protect people from being fired by their employer. Especially when something like this is caught on camera. I mean, it is just as incriminating as DNA and fingerprints. They were not fired for exercising free speech as part of some governmental conspiracy. They were fired because they were being drunk, misogynistic bunch of douchecanoes harassing a woman just trying to do her job. Their actions reflected badly on the company and their behavior indicated that they could not be trusted to work along side female colleagues (or anyone for that matter). As you know, many/most (if not all) companies and business have anti-harassment and anti-bullying regulations that (at least in theory) protect employees from being the victims of sexual, religious, racial, homophobic and transphobic harassment/bullying. It makes me wonder if these MRAs consider this an affront on the right to free speech. Probably.
“It’s not like they think US law applies everywhere…
…because they don’t even know US law. They think that What They Want For Themselves is protected by the constitution, because isn’t that what constitutions are for?
Nothing to do with the law, everything to do with entitlement.”
Absolutely.
There was a women’s space on campus – apparently it was empty most of the time, but was kept open by the student union for the sake of women who had experienced past or ongoing harassment, sexual assault etc. Got to wonder about the kind of people who would begrudge others that.
I hate to break it to redneckcryonicist, but claiming that we evolved to do something does not mean that we should do it. That would be the fallacious Appeal to Nature.
I further hate (wink) to be the one to tell him, but he’s (surprise!) just wrong.
Science says women and men apparently evolved to be equals, RNC. Cry me a river.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists
No, no, no, you’re getting it all wrong. Evolution means that the way things are right now (or were previously, at least in the fevered imaginings of ignorant misogynistic pissbabies) are the way that things should always and have always been, because they were made perfect and are thus ‘natural’.
Just like how ‘freedom of speech’ means that these dudebros are allowed to say and do literally anything without facing any consequences from the public or private spheres of society, but minorities and marginalized groups and people they disagree with need to shut the fuck up or be subject to a vitriolic barrage of harassment. /sarcasm
I know you’re being sarcastic, but that sounds exactly like Creationism.
Ahaha yes, pretty much, t’was my intention to draw that comparison. That’s basically how badly these idiots misunderstand the concepts and vocabularly they like to throw around like water, that their interpretation is much closer to the polar opposite of the things they claim to stand for.
@Catalpa
I read that in Morrigan’s voice from DA.
“Fuckin’ cissy”?
Of course these shitlords would get all their knowledge of social issues from South Park. Of course they would.
Don’t get me wrong, South Park can be really funny and on point at times (the episode where Stan had to encounter the various dynamics regarding Facebook was hilarious IMO), but they should either educate themselves about social justice issues or shut up about them.
While the show may not always actively be mean-spirited towards specific minorities, a lot of it feels like “waah, it’s so haaaard to navigate the culture of equality as a cishet white man and take into consideration that people different from me exist” sometimes. I still cringe at the episode where “I don’t see race” was presented as some kind of an epiphany for Chef, a black character who would likely have heard that very same racist argument a thousand times over had the writers not been fairly clueless white guys.
@redneckcryonicist:
FIFY. Now your argument makes more sense. It’s still stupid, though.
I just recently had a huge fight over this “the majority should call all the shots in society because they can arbitrarily decide that their way is ‘natural’ and therefore ‘right’, despite not making logical sense” bullshit. No more, thank you very much.
@Anarchonist
I found that particular episode troubling because of Mr. Garrison and Cartman explaining trans* and cis stuff. Mr. Garrison is (or was?) racist, he decided to become a women then changes back to a man, he petitioned against gay rights while he was a woman because Mr. Slave, his boyfriend while he was a man, broke up with him because Mr. Slave is a gay man and isn’t attracted to women. And I don’t think I need to explain why it’s wrong that Cartman is explaining shit either.
I will say, I think this is the same episode, that Randy’s story that he’s actually Lorde was actually well-handled considering. (Although I wouldn’t know truly since I’m cisgendered myself.) Stan was a little douche about it, though, but that’s more about his character than actually expositional and story problems.
I will say that at least the terminology is out there, although it could have been handled waaaay better. It’s probably because each episode is done pretty quickly–there was a special about the creation of the Human Centipad episode that showed they write, voice and animate each episode in a week–so they don’t really get to mull over the exact implications or ways to express plot points better than they should.
At least it was better than what Family Guy did.
@Pandapool
Mr. Mackey calling “cis” “normal” and Mr. Garrison reacting to this with some kind of mixed horror and panic doubtlessly gave dudebros more fuel to their “the PC police is everywhere!” paranoia. It wasn’t an overall terrible episode, but Cheetos, get a clue, guys.
Family Guy I can’t say anything about. I’ve seen probably three or four episodes of that show, and each and every one of them had a rape joke in it. I don’t know if I just had bad luck in choosing episodes, but that put me off, probably for life. On top of that, I just find the show unfunny in general.
@Anarchonist
Family Guy has a shit ton of rape jokes in it. I’d say a good 95% of the episodes have at least one.
And if you feel like getting angry, here is a summary of the infamous Family Guy episode Quagmire’s Dad.
Of course, the summary doesn’t tell all the horrible shit that goes down, like the conversation that Quagmire has with Peter and Lois about Ida, the transgender woman the episode is about, and them calling Ida “a really gay man” because she transitioned, or Lois throwing out the dish Ida brought to dinner because she’s transgender, or how much of a freak out Brian did when he figured out he slept with a transgender woman.
The worst part is that Ida gets so little time to explain shit and there’s no counter argument to the whole “yeah, transexuals are weird”. And not a single episode afterwards corrects this, either. It only gets worst.
Not only does Ida barely get mentioned again, during a Thanksgiving episode, Brian calls her “a big dumb drag queen” and in another episode, Quagmire sleeps with Ida, his own mother, on a dare.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/omg.gif
I MEAN WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, PEOPLE?
Okay. For all the fed up people here’s a nice big barrel of hugs and soft cuddly toys and flowers and candles and choccies’n’stuff.
For those who’re left speechless in the face of the bullshit avalanche, WHTM now has — courtesy of me — our very own ‘stationery’ cupboard. It’s unique. It’s full of evens and wuts and WTFs and oh my giddy aunts for everyone who finds they’ve run out of these essentials. Enjoy.
Family Guy is unoriginal, not funny, boring, reactionary, pretends cultural references are inherently funny, has sub-standard voice acting, not funny, has terribly structured scripts, recycles it’s own shitty jokes, pretends it’s outrageous without taking any actual risks, made Seth MacFarlane undeservedly popular and not funny.
The only decent thing to come from Family Guy is the withering and dead on South Park two-part mockery of it.
@Pandapool
Thanks for that link, and that info. I knew I despised Family Guy for a reason.
Anyways, I’ll be postponing my getting angry at asshole show writers for a few days. I’ll be attending the World Village Festival in Helsinki this weekend, listening to speakers and great music from around the world. And getting info and meeting interesting people. And getting outraged at capitalist imperialism in Third World countries, probably, but hey, nothing new there.
@brooked
Did you mention it’s not funny either?
@brooked
A lot of its jokes are just ripped directly from the thing they’re “parodying”, like the episode in which they “parody” Tootsie. They put in the whole joke about what’s his name trying to hail a taxi in his falsetto voice, but then yells in his normal voice and gets a taxi straight away. They put that entire joke in there line for line, beat for beat. I’m thinking since Tootsie is an old movie they think the younger kids who watch the show wouldn’t notice.
I’d say the best thing that came out of Family Guy was American Dad. It’s more original stories and handles subject matter 10000000000x better, not that that’s saying much. Cleveland Show is a close second, since it also handles subject matter and is more original stories as well. But it has some recycled shit from Family Guy and the main character, Cleveland’s, personality is completely different to what he used to be in Family Guy.They basically made Cleveland into a Peter clone.
@Anarchonist
Oh, I forgot to say I hope you have a good trip! 😀
I haven’t watch American Dad or Cleveland Show because I’ve had such a adverse reaction to Family Guy. I haven’t watched that much Family Guy, but I watched a few episodes with people who really like it and I didn’t see one positive aspect to it. I wouldn’t debate a fan over it, I don’t care or know enough about it. They can love it even if it sucks, to each their own.
I just had to make a comment here… Yes, some ciswomen “real-world-troll” transwomen and harass them for using women’s restrooms. Unfortunately it’s a thing that happens.
@brooked
I’d say give at least American Dad a shot but you don’t have to. I can at least say there has never been an episode that has made me go “THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS DOING?” yet like Family Guy has a billion times.
For instance, there’s a gay couple, Terry Bates and Greg Corbin, across the street from where the Smiths, the main character family, live. They’re stereotypical, admittedly. They happen to both be news reporters and are frequently on the show as such but also out of the context of news. For instance, there was a whole episode in which Stan Smith, the father, wants to speak at the speaker at the Republican Convention but he gets rejected. Soon he finds the Log Cabin Republicans and finds out they’re gay and there’s predictable reactions to it – however, Greg happens to be Republican, which Terry freaks out about.
There’s also an episode where Terry and Greg decide to have a baby and Francine, Stan’s wife, volunteers to be the surrogate, although Stan doesn’t know this. Greg is shown being extremely apprehensive about becoming a father, but Terry is rather level headed about it and is rather annoyed at Greg’s reaction – which lasts until Greg holds his daughter in his arms for the first time. It’s funny and cute.
Then there’s the episode where Terry’s father comes to visit and Terry pretends that he had a baby out of wedlock with Francine as his girlfriend because his father is extremely homophobic. In the end, Terry’s father doesn’t change his mind about it. Through many episodes before and after, you can tell that this rather upsets Terry, though Greg comforts him.
But I think the best part is while they may be a little flamboyant, their relationship is depicted as normal, and as you can see, they fleshed out characters despite being secondary characters. There’s no sexual kinks mentioned, no jokes about pedophilia, just honestly a normal couple with a baby.
Really the only time sexual kinks come up is between Hailey and her husband Jeff are using sex swings and this one episode that involved spicing up their sex life. And then there’s the episode in which Stan and Francine decide to try some kink stuff because it turns out Francine has a thing for spankings.
But then there’s also Rodger. He’s a hedonistic, lazy, alcoholic, abusive, pansexual space alien. He’s actually where I first heard of pansexuality. And he actually describes himself as pansexual on the show…not that’s, you know, super great in a way, but, you know, how many characters on TV can you say have outright said they’re pansexual? He happens to have a million disguises and personas and shit I won’t get into making him rather complex but, yeah.
I gone a little off topic. Let me get back to gay guys.
Every story about homophobia, a lesson is learned and it’s rather positive, which the exception of Terry’s dad where we learn that no matter if someone knows that being gay isn’t a choice and stuff, some people will just hate gay people for being gay. It’s a sad lesson, but true.
It’s just so fucking amazing that Family Guy can so fuck up spectacularly but then we have Terry and Greg on American Dad! It’s just so fucking weird! But also amazing! Exclamation!
Oh, did you guys catch wind of this controversy: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/as-a-white-man-im-surprised-more-women-arent-tweeting-the-hashtag-killallwhitemen-10266952.html ?
Goldsmith’s Diversity Officer, Bahar Mustafa, is being accused of Racism and Sexism for
A) Excluding white cis-men from a Queer BME conference event.
B) Tweeting #KillAllWhiteMen.
There’s a big petition to get her removed from her role as Diversity Officer, and I’m really frustrated at how many people are throwing a tantrum over how she’s apparently “inciting genocide”, whilst bombarding her with slurs.
This is at least the third or fourth instance of the position of Diversity Officer being attacked at a university in the last couple of years that I’ve been aware of.
University of Birmingham’s Women’s Association faced backlash for banning Robin Thicke’s music from being played in the student union, as part of their zero-tolerence policy on sexual harassment and “Lad culture”.
I forget which university it was (might have been Loughborough) that had a cis-man running for Women’s Officer because he had “identified as a woman ever since he realised he could get into the women’s changing rooms”, and promised to make sure there was plenty of “gash” at Freshers club nights.
He was deliberately mocking the position of WO and calling for its abolition, by being a sexist, transphobic jerk-wad. I think he was eventually removed from the election and disciplined, thank goodness.
And then there was Tasmanian University, where a cis-man was elected to Women’s Officer, perhaps with good intentions, but clearly didn’t understand why he was not the best candidate for the job. http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/james-ritchie-resigns-as-womens-officer-at-tuu/story-fnjbnts7-1227297386040
There seems to be quite a few of these instances, where Women’s spaces at universities are being challenged and threatened by the student bodies they represent, the media and other outraged individuals who are opposed to progress.
It seems to be part of the backlash against Feminism in general, but it’s really frustrating just how many people (even certified commies among my friends) buy into this shit that it’s ok to call a woman a “stupid c**t” for enforcing a safe-space policy. >_<
I saw this a while ago on imgur actually. A terrible post titled “Tumblr leaked into my real life- I had to highlight their hypocrisy”. Predictably the comments were mostly a mix of shit and hateful shit. But one of them had a link to this thing, which is great:
: