While Men’s Rights Activists are quick to label virtually any woman that they disagree with a feminist, they react with outrage when anyone who is not a self-admitted MRA is described as one.
The folks at A Voice for Men are still fuming about what they consider a “trust-shattering” media scandal: the fact that a bunch of news outlets wrote about a supposed Men’s Rights boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road, when in fact the virulently antifeminist Youtube blabber calling for the boycott wasn’t technically a Men’s Rights activist at all.
Meanwhile, there’s a dude cluttering up my Twitter mentions with demands I take some sort of action against a tiny handful of commenters on this blog who have referred to the woman-hating mass killer Elliot Rodger as an MRA, even though, as far as we know, he wasn’t one.
To which I can only say: Sorry, guys. You’re Kleenex. And you’d better get used to it.
I don’t mean to imply that MRAs are thin sheets of paper best suited to being used as disposable snot-collectors. What I mean is that MRAs, like the makers of Kleenex, have lost control of their brand name.
Just as the word “Kleenex,” a brand name designating the product of one manufacturer, has become, in popular usage, a generic term for disposable snot-rags, so “MRA” has, in popular usage, become a catchall term used to designate any and all varieties of woman-hating nitwits who think “misandry” is a bigger problem than misogyny.
So why have Manospherians, Pickup Artists, Incels, MGTOWs, GamerGaters, “slut haters,” Dark Enlightenment “thinkers,” and assorted other types of woman-hating nitwits all found themselves labelled MRAs, much to the chagrin of some self-declared MRAs?
Well, dudes, it’s actually pretty simple: because no one but you — and close followers of the New Misogyny, like the readers of this blog — can tell the difference between any of these groups of people. Because 90% of the backwards beliefs you espouse are exactly the same.
Take the idea of female “hypergamy” — that is, the notion that women are perpetually obsessed with finding a “better” guy, and will happily desert or cheat on “beta” partners whenever they get a whiff of a nearby “alpha.” This particular redefinition of a term that used to simply mean “marrying up” originated with White Nationalist F. Roger Devlin; now it’s a central belief of Red Pillers everywhere, from the reactionary plate-spinning PUAs of the Red Pill subreddit (where Devlin’s, er, seminal work on the subject is listed in the sidebar) to the “Men’s Human Rights Activists” of A Voice for Men (where no less than 35 articles have mentioned the subject, including 7 in their headlines, and where one writer declared Devlin’s writing “supremely indispensable.”)
MRAs aren’t PUAs aren’t White Nationalists, but there are a lot of people whose identity straddles two or more of these labels, and they all love talking about hypergamy.
As for Elliot Rodger, he wasn’t an MRA or a PUA or a White Nationalist, but he hung out on a website, PUAhate, whose participants were immersed in the same misogynistic ideology that drives so many MRAs; indeed, one of the site’s mods was a regular contributor to AVFM. If you read through book-length manifesto left behind, as I have, you’ll find a lot of anti-woman rhetoric that is virtually identical to the hateful nonsense you can find posted all over the broader “manosphere.”. He also was a believer in female “hypergamy,” offering his own chilling take on one “meme” depicting the alleged unfairness of women’s sexual tastes that you can find all over the manosphere.
This isn’t the same sort of mislabeling that happens when, say, someone calls Margaret Thatcher a feminist, or when MGTOWs describe contemporary marriage as a feminist plot to enslave men, or when some particularly confused commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit, say, declares far-right Norwegian MRA Elvind Berge to be some sort of feminist because he has suggested that teen boys raped by female teachers are “lucky.” (Never mind that this is not exactly a feminist belief in the first place.)
No, it’s much closer to identifying a Puffs facial tissue as a Kleenex.
Or, to fall back on the classic Monty Python bit, mixing up the Judean People’s Front with the People’s Front of Judea.
The outrage over the Men’s-Rights-boycott-of-Mad Max: Fury-Road-That-Wasn’t has gotten nearly as silly as that Monty Python bit. Over on AVFM, the site’s excitable managing editor, Dean Esmay, has been posting furious post after furious post attacking the “bigoted hatemonger[s]” and “hate-filled bigots” who in his mind are promoting “fabricated bullshit” claiming that Men’s Rights activists were boycotting the film.
At one point, he even suggested that these stories might be the result of “an actual coordinated plan by corrupt journalists who want to inject slander of human rights activists into supposedly straight news.”
In case you’re wondering, when Esmay talks about “human rights activists” he’s referring to MRAs. No, really.
Esmay is right about two things: Aaron Clarey, who called for the boycott, isn’t an MRA, nor is Roosh V, on whose site Clarey’s post was posted.
But it’s not hard to see how Clarey might have been mistaken for an MRA, given that in his post he sounds exactly like one. Indeed, he sounds enough like an MRA that AVFM has posted a number of articles and videos by Clarey on its site, the most recent of which, posted last month, was an excerpt of the white writer’s rather presumptuous self-published book “The Black Man’s Guide Out of Poverty.”
The whole fake controversy reached new heights of silliness today, when AVFM posted a piece denouncing a Forbes writer for talking about the supposed “Men’s Rights” boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road alongside a piece … decrying a supposed “feminist takeover of Hollywood.” No, really.
I’m going to post five quotes below. One or more is/are from Aaron Clarey’s non-MRA call for a boycott; the other or others are from Rachael Lefler’s AVFM attack on Hollywood feminism. Can you guess which are which?
- “[T]his maddening obsession with a distorted concept of egalitarianism and fairness is never going to end … and Hollywood will keep trying to make films that meet their demands which are never able to be met, because the feminists will still find shit to complain about.”
- “[F]eminism has infiltrated and co-opted Hollywood, ruining nearly every potentially-good action flick with a forced female character or an unnecessary romance sub-plot to eek out that extra 3 million in female attendees.”
- “[Feminists are] totally fine with a movie that perpetuates negative stereotypes about men, since we all know men are just dumb oppressive shitlords who can’t keep their rape-sticks in their pants for five minutes.”
- “This is the vehicle by which they are guaranteed to force a lecture on feminism down your throat. This is the Trojan Horse feminists and Hollywood leftists will use to (vainly) insist on the trope women are equal to men in all things, including physique, strength, and logic.”
- “Feminists will never be satisfied by any work of fiction, no matter how in line it is with feminist principles. They can always demand more, and they always will. Their whole idea of “activism” is to cry about how they are being oppressed by the latest blockbuster and to angrily denounce the next one on Twitter.”
So which of the quote(s) above is/are from the NON-MRA article by NON-MRA Aaron Clarey, posted on the NON-MRA “Return of Kings” website, and which is/are from the post by MRA (or at least MRA-sympathizer) Rachael Lefler on AVFM, the most influential site of the Men’s Rights movement?
.
1, 3, and 5 are from Lefler (Team MRA); 2 and 4 are from Clarey (Team Don’t Even Dare Call Him an MRA You Hatemongering Bigots). Don’t beat yourself up if you got some wrong: I had to doublecheck the origin of a couple of them, even though I’d cut and pasted them into this post only moments earlier.
So yeah, MRAs, you’re Kleenex.
Now, I’m a stickler for details, so I will personally continue to draw distinctions between MRAs and the various other sects of New Misogynists out there. But not everyone else will. Some because they don’t know all the details, others because they don’t care to distinguish between 31 flavors of terrible.
EDIT: Rewrote the conclusion.
I find this whole Feminist-MRA feud to be tiring and foolish. MRAs & Feminists are natural allies as we are both devoted to smashing the Gender roles demanded by the Patriarchy.
The Patriarchy wants Women to be at home, subservient, quiet, and always obsessed with pleasing their men. You fight it by refusing to play along with those rules.
The Patriarchy wants men to work hard and take care of their families. We MRAs fight it by refusing to do any of those things. Every child support payment I don’t send is another blow against the Patriarchy. Every hour my ex is forced to work just to feed my kids is another strike against restrictive Gender roles.
Think of what we could accomplish if we worked together.
@brooked apparently there was a cinematic remake on the cards for the Secrets of Isis, but that darn IS and those who insist on calling them ISIS have gone and ruined the fun for everyone.
Though I’m sure the manosphere would have seen it as another example of Hollywood going all feminist.
@rugbyyogi
I didn’t hear about that project. We can’t have nice things even after taking over Hollywood.
When big Hollywood studios put out huge budget movies, they’re way more concerned with profit in foreign markets than catering to a small but motivated domestic group online. MGM changed the villains in the Red Dawn remake from Chinese to North Korean for fears of getting on the Chinese government’s bad side and losing access to that market. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/16/entertainment/la-et-china-red-dawn-20110316
Another group Hollywood actually cares about pleasing; the US military. In exchange for cheap access to military bases, equipment etc. studios will change scripts and make them Pentagon approved. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/09/operation-hollywood
If MRAs think feminists criticizing movies online have anywhere near this kind of power, they are indeed deluding themselves. If they’re so worried about their action movies being tinkered with for profit, they should worry about the influence of foreign governments and the military, not SJWs. Of course, they don’t give a shit about art. They’re fine with movies being Pentagon vetted as long as they don’t contain any female characters with agency or have any kind of progressive political message.
Posted too soon. This is why I’m always skeptical of movies that have any characters in the military. The movie is sure to be a whitewashing, nationalistic mess. Especially post 9-11.
@rugbyyogi:
Call them Daesh instead. It’s an Arabic acronym (al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham kind of abbreviates to Daesh if you squint at it) and for reasons which are completely untranslatable into English it’s considered hilarious and insulting in a slightly immature way.
Think of it as referring to the Tea Party as teatards, except less ableist.
My favorite tale about Isis is how, when Set killed and dismembered Osiris, Isis put him back together but either couldn’t find his penis, or some crabs ate it, so she made him a golden strap-on and conceived Horus.
Talk about LIQUID FUCKING GOLD.
I still remember when I began to see MRAs in some online communities I visit, about 2 years ago.
At first, it was a self-applied label. It sounded more high-minded than “anti-feminist”, which is really what it means, and the kind of arguments it went along with.
People figured out pretty quick that these self-identified MRAs were absurd, spiteful people, and the label became a joke. Within a few months it was only used pejoratively, and people would lose their shit when called an MRA.
I believe its the same principle as the euphemism treadmill.
“Blah blah, both sides do it, but feminists are totally more stupid, blah blah blah.”
Oh good, it’s one of those trolls. *eyeroll* I’m going to have some fun with this, and “manslate” the segments before I comment on them.
“I’m going to step in and be the voice of goddamned reason here! You’re both stupid (but feminists are obviously more stupid), and everyone should obviously listen to me (despite the fact I’ve shown I don’t care about either group)!”
Yup, why can’t we all be as level-headed and intelligent as Marky here! Why can’t we all strive to be more like a man with his head so obviously shoved up his ass?
“The Oppression Olympics are a thing! Look at Angela down the street! She has bruises where it counts! Shut your mouth and be grateful that you’re not like her! If you don’t, I’ll make you like her!“
If the Oppression Olympics were a thing, then no one would be allowed to complain at all, because there’s always someone with a “worse” problem. Some people are starving, some people are suffering from deadly diseases that are killing them slowly, some people are bleeding to death at this very moment. And that would mean, Marky, that your whining about how feminists are whining isn’t fair to starving children in Africa. There are bigger problems than yours!
However, the Oppression Olympics are not a thing. Feminists are capable of caring about their personal problems as well as “bigger” problems. (And Marky is allowed to whine about how he thinks it’s so unfair that feminists are talking about things he doesn’t approve of.)
On top of that, lots of feminists realize that sometimes it’s not our place to go do something about those “bigger” problems.
For instance: I’m white. It’s not my place to go and “save” those “poor women” in the “Middle East”. I obviously care about them and their problems, but it’s not my place to decide one, what those problems are, and two, what to do about it. It’s my job to listen to the people actually effected by said problems and defer to them if they want or need my help with anything. I boost them where I can, and I listen to them when they’re speaking. Because having a “Great White Savior” complex is racist as fuck.
That being said: The existence of “bigger” problems does not make my problems as an United States White Woman any less significant, not only because they are indeed problems that need to be addressed, but also because those “poor women” in the “Middle East” have some of the same problems us western white women have too.
They have access to internet, watch TV, listen to music, read books, have fashion shows, and they have a lot of the same problems we do. They have to deal with rape, catcalling, being forced out of jobs because of their gender, being treated as property for men to own, being objectified and then blamed for that objectification, etc.
So fuck off with your “First World Problems” bullshit. It’s racist as fuck, and only serves to attempt to diminish the problems you deem “lesser”.
“What’s ‘Internalized Misogyny’?”
*ahem* “The Civil Rights Movement was so awful that some African Americans wouldn’t join up with the movement!”
This is what you sound like.
What’s that? Women are individual people with different beliefs and can believe things that might be harmful to them just like men? Shocker.
Also, there might be many reasons why women are anti-feminist. Some of them legitimately believe the things anti-feminists say. There was an interesting analogy (I’ll paraphrase it for you) I heard that sums it up perfectly:
“A woman saying that she doesn’t need feminism is like a woman saying she doesn’t need a fire extinguisher because she doesn’t think her house is on fire. However, her house is on fire, but she’s lived in a burning house for so long that she believes that breathing in smoke and dealing with the searing heat is ‘normal’.”
Kind of like that experiment where you put a frog into a pot of hot water, and it’ll jump out, but if you put it in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, it’ll stay in there until it cooks.
Some anti-feminist women have what I refer to as a “Special Snowflake Complex”, or “I’m-Not-Like-Other-Girls Complex”, which is a symptom of the patriarchy in action: “Women are not the friends of women, they are competition for everything, most importantly the attention of men”.
Some women are “anti-feminist” in different ways. Some Transpeople and Women of Color have rejected the label “feminist”, because Feminism does have a history of neglecting their needs. Their beliefs are still what people would consider “feminist” at their core, but they are focusing more on the issues that come with being a PoC or trans, because that matters to them more.
A lot of feminists (myself included), do see this as a sign that we need to become more intersectional, because what Feminism seeks to address overlaps heavily with a lot of issues concerning race, sexuality, and gender.
“Feminists aren’t operating the way I want them to or talking about the things I want them to talk about (things that are important to ME, or things I pre-approve of), and thus they’re all stupid stupid-heads who can’t do anything right and don’t ‘introspect’ properly.”
Firstly, refer to above about why I said some women are anti-feminist.
Secondly, fuck off with your “More Intellectual than You” bullshit. If you were truly “introspective” and “intellectual”, you’d maybe take the time to listen to what people have to say instead of waltzing in here like you’re better than everyone else and making a sorry attempt at telling us off.
Shorter mark:
“All this evidence of what’s bunch of tools the MRAs are is actually proof that feminists are tools! Because I said so!”
ALL THE FUCKING LOLS.
@feminist mra wrote:
“I find this whole Feminist-MRA feud to be tiring and foolish. MRAs & Feminists are natural allies as we are both devoted to smashing the Gender roles demanded by the Patriarchy.
The Patriarchy wants Women to be at home, subservient, quiet, and always obsessed with pleasing their men. You fight it by refusing to play along with those rules.
The Patriarchy wants men to work hard and take care of their families. We MRAs fight it by refusing to do any of those things. Every child support payment I don’t send is another blow against the Patriarchy. Every hour my ex is forced to work just to feed my kids is another strike against restrictive Gender roles.
Think of what we could accomplish if we worked together.”
Oh good, a deadbeat wrapping himself in the flag of the SJW.
There is a lot I could say to any one of these trolls, but I’m not going to bother if they are drive-bys. I think I’ll wait until/unless one of them comes back and wants a discussion.
No, for several reasons:
1: I doubt you could define “radfem” if you had a gun to your head, with a pot of gold as a payoff for success.
2: Not even all radfems hold functionally identical beliefs–TERFs are a subset of radfems, not the defining element, for instance.
3: You’d also have to be able to demonstrate a comprehension of which comments of the radfems you find to be so ‘wacky’, and make it clear you understand their context.
4: Even if you cleared all of those hurdles, and identified a subset of radfems who make wacky comments based on mistaken beliefs, you would then need to display how we, the WHTM commentariat, share those beliefs, preferably by putting side-by-side quotes from each.
A significant function of this blog–beyond, of course, mocking the over-entitled whining man-children of the collected manosphere–is to demonstrate, at length, that the core beliefs of all the various wings really come down to the same basic fundamentals–that men are the only people who deserve to be treated as such, and that women should exist solely for the men’s benefit.
**Thanks to all for leaving this particular low-hanging twit for me to smack. I usually arrive late to the party.
Like you, radfems rally against the mysterious patriarchy and like you are obsessed with rape culture, fat shaming, slut shaming, etc. You and the person below are similarly Kleenex:
https://icemountainfire.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/men-are-not-broken/
Oh, look, one of them came back.
Too bad it’s the one least likely to actually want to have a discussion.
Hey, idiot. You’re making radfems sound pretty good. Railing against radfems for being “obsessed with rape culture” is like railing against civil rights activists for being “obsessed with racism.” That’s not actually an insult. I know you think it is, but it isn’t.
When you try to insult people by pointing out that they hold intelligent and informed beliefs that are in-line with reality, the only person you successfully insult is yourself.
And a hearty “fuck you” to you too.
Why do misogynists so often spam their shitty blogs here? Does Aaron think David will write a post about him? Sorry bud, you’re going to have to be more ridiculous than this half hearted trolling.
But you do accept that radfems are feminists, thus they are part of your Kleenex family. If you don’t, you are a hypocrite no matter how fast the hamster runs.
Now use some of that Kleenex to dry your eyes.
Worst They Might Be Giants lyrics ever.
When did anyone say radfems weren’t feminist, Aaron? Why are you debating an argument nobody made?
Aaron
And then you link to a gender essentialist/separatist blog posting — which claims that men are stupid, amoral, immoral, violent, disgusting, irredeemable beasts. Did you actually read that thing? It’s ludicrous.
In case you haven’t bothered to read any other posts or comments anywhere at all on this site, I’ll tell you. We, the people you think you are talking to on David’s blog, think that men are perfectly capable of civilised, kind, intelligent, responsible — and every other kind of virtuous and ordinary and admirable — behaviour. Just as women are.
Why is it always hamsters with these morons, and never goldfish? Sheesh.
Master Beta (lovely evocative name, that!) – actually, it’s pretty easy to distinguish between a Sikh and a Muslim on sight, even if they’re each wearing the turban and the beard. For a start: the Sikhs will tend to be wearing more Westernised clothing. Here in Australia, for example, if you have someone who is Islamic and wearing a turban, they will generally tend to be wearing more “ethnic” clothing – long tunic, scarves, pale coloured trousers rather than dark, moccasin style shoes etc – rather than a more Westernised suit or similar, because wearing the turban for Muslims in most non-Arabic countries is a conscious performance of a rejection of Western values. Also the Sikh beard generally looks neater – the type of Muslim man who wears a beard in a Western country is the type who isn’t a natural beard-grower, and who appears to feel that unless the scruffy beard they can grow looks as though it can conceal a flock of small birds, it isn’t a proper beard. Sikhs, by contrast, may not shave their beards, but they do groom them – so a Sikh’s beard will tend to look neat and tidy, even if it is the sort which can actually accommodate small livestock!
Secondly, Sikhs tend to be south-western Asian (originating from the Indian sub-continent), so they look different to the sort of Middle-eastern Muslim who is more likely to wear a turban. (A lot of it is the nose – sub-continental south-western Asian people generally have smaller noses than the Middle-eastern tribes; but there’s also things like the exact shade of the skin tone, the cheekbones, and so on to consider). They’re very visually different. Of course, this means you have to look at people and actually notice them, which I can quite understand might be upsetting to certain world views.
Thirdly, the turbans themselves are different. The Sikh turban is very much higher in the front, more rounded, padded and layered (or else they’re wearing the sort which looks like a beanie with a knot tied in it – but that’s more for the boys than for the men) whereas the Arabic or Berber turban is much smaller and flatter. Plus of course, the Sikh scarves tend to be either jewel tones or golden colours, while the Arabic turbans tend to be either homespun or neutral, sandy colours.
Of course, you can also notice contextual cues around them – such as looking at the clothing of the womenfolk (if the women with them are wearing a hijab or niqab, they’re probably Muslim; if the women are wearing saris or salwar khameez, they’re probably Sikh; if the women are in sober, plain colours, more likely to be Muslim; if the women are in bright jewel tones, more likely Sikh).
Also, and this is purely ten years of checkout experience speaking, if they’re Sikh, they’re more likely to be polite to service staff. The one turban-wearing Muslim I regularly encountered in my job as a checkout operator was a guy whose skin was paler than my own and whose wife wore the full veil, gloves, etc. He would inevitably look at me as though I were some kind of cockroach when I announced the total of their purchases, and acted as though my speaking at all was some kind of major anomaly in the universe which should be fixed as soon as possible. Whereas we had about three or four families of Sikhs in the district who were all absolute joys to serve – they spoke back, they accepted my wishes for a pleasant day and reciprocated, they treated me as though I were a human being and so on.
(Oh, and I wouldn’t think of blaming anyone for the actions of IS* except the people involved. But then, I’m weird that way).
@Aaron
You know, a quick google search lead me to a wiki page that lists 21 different types of feminism.
There is liberal feminism that “asserts the equality of men and women through political and legal reform”.
There is anarcha-feminism which combines anarchism and feminism, who are anti-capitalism, anti-state, anti-authority, etc.
Then there’s socialist-feminism, who “see prostitution, domestic work, childcare and marriage as ways women are exploited by a patriarchal system.”
Then there’s radical feminism, who believe they that society cannot be reformed and that “the total uprooting and reconstruction of society [is needed] in order to achieve their goals” for equality.
Then there’s separatist feminism, which is a type of radical feminism, “that does not support heterosexual relationships” and feel that “sexual disparities between men and women are unresolvable”. They’re Women Going Their Own Way, you know, something MGTOW copied.
Then there’s womanism, which state “that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together”. It was created because many times, mainstream feminism ignored the plight of women of color, which can be unfortunately true.
Then there’s third-world feminism, which are “feminist theories developed by feminists who acquired their views and took part in feminist politics in so-called third world countries.” It criticizes Western feminism for its ethnocentrism, which it certainly has.
Then there’s New Age feminism, in which “a woman (or man) embraces the qualities in him or herself that have culturally been defined as ‘feminine’ without shame, while still fighting against the discrimination women (and ‘feminine’ men) still face in the workplace and other facets of 21st century society.”
And there’s Ecofeminism, which “argue that the men in power control the land, and therefore are able to exploit it for their own profit and success. In this situation, Ecofeminists consider women to be exploited by men in power for their own profit, success, and pleasure.”
And there’s transfeminism, which is “‘a category of feminism, most often known for the application of transgender discourses to feminist discourses, and of feminist beliefs to transgender discourse'”.
Man, it’s almost like there’s a bunch of different ideologies or something! Let’s see what’s the difference between MRAs, PUAs, GamerGaters and shit is:
MRAs: Women suck and control men with their mighty buttocks and bosoms! Rage against them!
PUAs: Women suck and control men with their mighty buttockls and bosoms! Fuck them! Literally!
MGTOW: Women suck and control men with their mighty buttocks and bosoms! We don’t need them! Don’t fuck them! Please notice that we aren’t fucking them!
GamerGate: Women such and control the game industry with their mighty buttocks and bosoms! But it’s really about journalistic integrity!
All Other Man-Centric Movement: Women suck and control men with their mighty buttocks and bosoms! They really do, like, a lot. So much, guys, so much.
Wow, who would have thought that these men-centric movements totally are all different and stuff. Such variety, much distinction.