On Fathers Day, somewhere on the internet, the following meme was posted:
The Men’s Rights subreddit reacted, as it so often does, with manly indignation: how dare these women take our Fathers Day from us! Even by normal Men’s Rights standards for empty outrage this seems a bit much. After all, it’s not exactly news that a lot of women raise their kids by themselves, when the fathers of their children, refuse to act as, well, fathers to their children. Indeed, “financial abortions” — that is, consequence-free child abandonment for men — is one of the central demands of the Men’s Rights movement.
But to one anonymous commenter on the Men’s Rights subreddit, this meme could well be the final insult that transforms the men of the world into angry panda impersonators destroying everything within reach.
According to this anonymous observer,
this really scares me, enough that I wake up at night thinking about it.
Wait. You wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking about … a meme?
No one could deny that there is open warfare on men all throughout western society. Whether or not it is deserved is somewhat irrelevant (you’ll see why in a second). There’s a minority of men who are alarmed but the vast majority just doesn’t have this on their radar…yet. This is mostly because it doesn’t affect them directly.
How can there be “open warfare” on men if most men haven’t even noticed it? Has there ever been a war in which the majority of those ostensibly affected by it don’t even know that it exists?
But never mind, because “[t]hat’s all going to change soon.”
Mixing his metaphors with wild abandon, this anonymous Men’s Rights Nostradamus predicts that
It won’t be long until the inroads that feminism has blazed start to butt up against the everyday Joe that’s just living his life.
Ah, the ever-reliable “everyday Joe,” beloved icon of reactionary grumblers since pretty much forever. In 2008, he took the form of a plumber (well, sort of). In 1970, they made a movie about him.
It appears that feminism doesn’t know when to quit and I clearly see the movement doing something that causes ‘Joe’ to not only look up from his newspaper but also impact him in a negative way.
You wouldn’t like me when I look up from my newspaper!
This lights the fuse.
Throughout history the one thing men are good at is responding to threats, whether they are real or not. I’m reminded of a video of a robbery at a convenience store I saw. The robber had a knife pointed at the clerk, demanding the contents of the register. Two random men were behind him, watching it all go down. One guy looked at the other and did the “upward head nod”. The other guy responded with the same discreet movement and they launched at the robber, taking him down. These two guys didn’t know each other at all but they, like most all men, are given to cohesive bonding when a threat is present.
Men also make up the vast majority of those robbing convenience stores, but never mind.
Feminism gives a perfect storm for this response and it’s going to be really ugly. When men get pissed, especially when they feel disenfranchised or morally wronged, they start breaking things.
Are you sure you haven’t confused men with toddlers having tantrums?
If this starts to steamroll it will make Ferguson look like a dress rehearsal.
That escalated quickly. Good old everyday Joe was just sitting there reading his newspaper, when all of a sudden he caught sight of a feminist meme on the internet. Next stop, literal rioting in the streets.
Those cops that will be asked to stop it? Those are overwhelmingly men too. Many will be sympathetic and I see lines being crossed.
A Man/Cop Alliance of Rioting Manbabies?
Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if this doesn’t get dealt with that it could be something on par with a major social upheaval. It’s going to be expensive, bloody, and it’s going to change everything for several generations. Once men start hammering, it ALL looks like a nail.
Yeah this bothers me a lot. I hope I’m badly wrong.
No you don’t. MRAs and other reactionary misogynists are forever airing these kinds of apocalyptic fantasies, in which the evil feminists “push men too far” and the men “finally explode” like some kind of “male bomb.” Civilization crumbles, and those evil complainy women get their final comeuppance.
Some of the men profess their deep “concern” that the women they want to shut up won’t shut up until it’s “too late.” Others can barely conceal their glee at the prospect of a bloody Manpocalypse that will put women back in their place.
Because this isn’t a warning. It’s a threat. It’s what every wife-batterer does when he “reminds” his wife that she won’t like him when he’s angry. It’s a way to control women through fear. Or at least an attempt to.
The only difference now is that the dude doing the “reminding” isn’t threatening his wife at home; he’s playing to the crowd in the Men’s Rights subreddit, and getting upvotes for it.
All over a meme.
So which gender is supposed to be the emotional one again?
H/T — r/againstmensrights
My only fear with the marriage equality thing is that this will make middle-class white men stop caring about LGBTQ. They got theirs! I hope I am being needlessly pessimistic, and this doesn’t mean they now kick back and discover their inner neocons.
@PoM
Like when they figured racism was over because Obama was president?
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/bust1.gif
I prefer games that would go ahead and tell me if I had the resources to make steel, rather than make me have to appoint a bookkeeper, wait for them to take inventory, and then figure how many iron ore stones I have, how many iron and pig iron bars, and how much flux stone and fuel. Just give me an option and grey it out if I don’t have the stuff yet.
But sometimes it’s fun. I am looking at learning how to get my soldiers to patrol, next.
I’m the sort of person who plays really complex games. Crusader Kings 2, Victoria 2, Dwarf Fortress… anything which requires me to really understand how it works and makes me feel clever is something I enjoy. Anything else just gets solved too quickly and becomes a mere implementation challenge.
DF did give me some homesickness, though, for Dungeon Keeper. It never ran for me on Windows XP so I haven’t been able to play it in more than 10 years. I can see the potential in this game for an epic DK knock-off if it were repurposed a bit and given evil narration.
Dungeon Keeper 2 was awesome. If someone can find a way to run it, they should definitely do a narrated game of it like I did for Dwarf Fortress.
@EJ (The Other One)
Are you into Europa Universalis 4 at all? I’ve been so stoked about it once more since the new DLC (Common Sense) came out earlier in June. I’ve only played Victoria 1, but I have some great memories of it. And of course I’m looking forward to when Heart of Iron 4 comes out next year…
Sorry, I’m a bit of a Paradox fanboy…
Sadly, I was never able to finish DK2. I started it, and then had to buy a new computer quite suddenly with Win XP. DK2 would boot, but the idle detection was fragged in some way. I could dig and build etc. but after a minute or so the game would start zooming to random areas as if I were idle. The game is unplayable like that.
If I knew where the disk was, I’d try playing it on Win 7, but alas.
@PoM
http://store.steampowered.com/app/230190/
War for the Overworld is a spiritual successor of Dungeon Keeper, if you’re interested.
There’s also Dungeon Keeper 2 and Dungeon Keeper Gold on GOG for $6 each if you’re interested. GOG makes old games run on modern systems without DRM, BTW.
http://www.gog.com/game/dungeon_keeper_2
http://www.gog.com/game/dungeon_keeper
@Monzach:
Yeah, big Paradox fanboy. I haven’t played EU4 though. Hearts of Iron 4… I’m puzzled. I’m used to Paradox releasing their games in an unplayably buggy state and then patching them over the course of years. Here, they’ve pushed back the launch instead. What sorcery is this?
@PolicyOfMadness:
That’s very annoying. A lot of old games do things like that though. I suppose it’s like the early days of film: technology is advancing so fast that old stuff is lost simply because it was designed for now-obsolete hardware.
*clears throat*
hmm mmhmm
Sorry, throat’s a bit dry.
GoG also has frequent sales, so with a bit of patience, you could easily grab both Dungeon Keepers for less than $5 total.
Ninja’d by Pandapool!
@EJ (The Other One)
Oh you should definitely give EU4 a try if you have a spare slot in your gaming schedule. Fair warning though, it will take a bit of getting used to. Although if you haven’t played any of the previous EU titles, there won’t be anything to unlearn first, so there’s that. 😀 It’s just a whole heap of fun playing as a big European nation and then going discovering new lands and meeting interesting new people and then enslaving them. 😛
And I have to agree with you, it’s weird seeing Paradox acting like this. I mean, I bought Hearts of Iron 3 the day it came out and as you so rightly say, it was buggy as hell. It didn’t help that the game had a huge learning curve, either. From what I hear, though, HOI4 should be a lot better.
*glitter poof*
@PoM
If you wanna play Dungeon Keeper: http://www.gog.com/game/dungeon_keeper
That’s an awesome website for old computer games.
Just adding to the GOG promotion – their conversions run like a charm. Also, I don’t know about War for the Overworld, but Dungeons 2 is a lot of fun. Plays like DK, but with an Overworld which plays like an RTS.
Mmmm … smells like bamboo chimichangas!
@Falconer
That actually sounds amazing. I wish I had bamboo to put in the chimichangas I ate for lunch now.
@ EJ
More or less religious* commenter here. I’m absolutely all for consent-based education. I can kind of understand wanting to control what information your kids receive about a kinda sensitive topic, but in reality, that just ends with young adults who are woefully under-informed about sex. I’ve had to explain to some of my (young adult) friends what orgasms are and how gay couples have sex.
I personally got most of my information about sex from reading books waaaayyy above my grade level. I got the basic “p goes in v and then a baby is made” when I was about ten (which is much younger than a lot of others with similar upbringing), but from then on it was mostly just “boys will try to get you to do things with them and you have to say no”, and lists of things that God is allegedly not okay with. As I got into my teens, I started reading books out of the adult section of the library. I got that sex is something that a lot of people find fun, but some books also mentioned that the first time involves blood. I basically decided that if it would involve bleeding, it didn’t want to do it.
The one thing that sicks out to me the most is an analogy about a lawnmower. It basically went like this: “Sex is a gift you’ve been given. Imagine if you got a lawnmower as a present. You would only use it to cut grass, because that’s what it’s for. If you use it to cut sticks then it will break and you can’t use it to cut grass anymore. Sex is like that. You should save it for it’s intended purpose (marriage).” Way to terrify a teenage girl, Mom.
I was never taught about consent. I learned that from the internet in university. (Feminist sex education for the win!) The idea that marriage equals consent is everywhere in religious circles.
I’m not sure what exactly can be done, but something needs to. I think it would start with not treating sex like something gross and wrong. Even if they’re told “we can talk about anything” they still feel ashamed about wanting to know about sex. Also stop thinking that masturbation is evil. If more young people can experiment on their own, then hopefully they’ll feel less pressure to experiment with someone who won’t be considerate about them.
I hope this is helpful-ish. Sorry it’s super long. It got a bit out of hand. 🙂
*If it matters to anyone, I would consider myself Christian but more spiritually than religiously, if that makes sense. I pray but institutional religion and I do not get along well. I was raised in a conservative but not fundamentalist church.
I love pansexual panda.
Incedently, my daughter’s boyfriend’s new nickname is Amanda. A Man Panda = Amanda.
OMG me too! Sort of.
My parents barely taught me anything about sex, except for “do it only when married”. I never had the “where babies come from/birds and bees” talk. They left educational books within reach since I’d read almost anything as a kid. From those books I knew the very bare bones about the sex act itself (insert pun about ‘knowing the ins and outs of it’ hah) and about erections, all before I was ten, but then more info came from sex ed in sixth grade. My parents weren’t shy if I asked them questions (I guess that’s how they thought they’d approach the whole thing) but tbh, most of my knowledge about consent and, well, the nuances and deeper emotional aspects of sex came from reading feminist stuff online. My high school was an all-girls Catholic one…yeah…but they did occasionally have talks that were actually relevant and modern and did advocate safe sex.
So overall, I guess my sex education has come from a bunch of different things, least of them my parents. XP Oh well. I think I do owe the most to feminism though.
What I would say to parents is this: Your children are going to learn about sex. Would you ratyher they learned from you and from trained educators, or from other horny teenagers and porn.
@EJ (the other one) and all others discussing sex ed
They’re revamping the curriculum for that in Ontario, and it’s led to all sorts of protests, mostly by people who clearly haven’t read the new curriculum. Some of the points they’re complaining about are in the section for teachers about “What to do if a student asks about this,” for instance. There’s also some very icky stuff going on with the Christian right providing faulty information to Muslims in the hopes that they’ll get involved and, of course, bear the brunt of the “stop being reactionary” backlash.
The curriculum itself is very consent-based, though some people are complaining it doesn’t talk about love. The parents complaining don’t seem to have noticed that they already have and will continue to have the right to pull their children out of the sex-ed classes. As people have noted, they’re not protesting against their kids learning this: they’re protesting about other people’s kids learning. Possibly because they know their own children will just ask their classmates what went on in the super-secret course they’re not allowed to take.
As for the porn thing, I’d have less qualms if the porn were better. If it is encouraging women to explore things they might be interested in, good, but if it’s pushing them into things they don’t actually enjoy, ick. Especially since it can be hard to tell if someone’s saying yes to something because they actually want to or not. If they don’t, so what? It’s not any harder to not have anal sex than it is to not rape someone. And suddenly the problem comes into view… But then I don’t suppose any of these chucklenutters would be able to understand the concept that asking can be fun. In my experience, at least, being asked “What do you like?” or “What do you want?” (depending on how far things have got) is something the ladies really like. And I don’t mean smile and say “How sweet,” I mean get even more turned on than they already were and demonstrate the fact. Must be my sexy, sexy mangina voice.
Of course, one sometimes suspects that a woman being turned on is actually a turn-off for a lot of these guys.
Clicked “Post” and then realized that “chucklenutters” might come across as ableist. Sorry about that; I was thinking of “nuts” in the sense of “testicles,” which is what I hear more often IRL. Apologies.