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
@PoM
Why can’t we let single parents have anything.
My Plan A was to go all murderhobo on them, but I’ll see if I can get cages out their way.
My major concern is that several of my dead dwarfs are just lying there and I can’t get them moved. That tends to worry everyone else.
I will commend myself to thy nose, then, PoM.
I still feel something is off here, but I’ll place the doubt on myself for now 😉
@EJ (The Other One):
I’ve noticed the same trend myself. Not that I’ve actually slept with anyone in over 10 years now, but I’ve had discussions about sexual matters with a lot of women and I have noted that easily accessible porn does shape the sexual preferences. No doubt the fact that sexuality is a lot less stigmatized these days is a factor as well, like @Lea said. All in all, I think that openness about one’s kinks and kinkiness in general is a good thing. Talking about these things should definitely be encouraged.
@Lea:
I think I’ll have to start referring to the cervix as “Helm’s Deep” now! 😀
Off topic, but here’s this guy on YouTube who think Poison Ivy is scary/nasty looking in Arkham Knight.
For comparison, here’s the old Ivy:
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/batman/images/6/65/Batman-Arkham-Asylum-Poison-Ivy-Trailer_5.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111028191936
Here’s Ivy in Arkham Knight.
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/batman/images/2/2b/Ivy_%28Arkham_Knight%29.png/revision/latest?cb=20150621001253
How do I break it to them that they seem to think “sexy” is based on photoshopped models and they’ll never find a woman who looks like that IRL?
Actually it looks like I lied when I said tessieura wasn’t using the hashtag. I hadn’t scrolled down far enough. Her tweets are … well, people should draw their own opinions on them. I won’t link but they aren’t hard to find by just looking at the tag.
I hope not, instead of paying respect to single fathers They’ll just turn it into a attack on women.
@Falconer:
Cages are more useful defensively. If you can create a line of them – or a gauntlet between obstacles – then it means that the zoats no longer have freedom of maneuver across the whole map. If you’re cunning you can even bait them into the traps.
Murderhoboing is dangerous – in my game I’ve still got Dwarf!PolicyOfMadness recuperating from hand injuries because I hadn’t had time to create gauntlets before she had to enter combat. Skilled dwarves aren’t something one can afford to squander.
As for the dead just lying there, there’s a few things that could cause that. Have you built sarcophagi and flagged them for use? Otherwise, check in the options menu to see if you’ve got “forbid on death” turned on.
@Monzach:
I’m certainly all in favour of things being openly discussed and stigmas being dropped. What I meant was that things which should be down to personal taste are becoming normalised, and thus people feeling that they “have to” indulge in degrading sex because that’s what they see in porn and so that’s what they feel is normal. The fact that I benefit from such a system makes me very uncomfortable.
… wut?
LOL
Sort of a Maginot line, but cross my fingers and hope it’s more effective? I’ve already got lots of traps in my entrance, between my trade depot and my stairs.
I do have coffins built, and flagged. One of these bodies has a coffin with his name on, but I think my dorfs just interred the first bit they found. I’ve tried dumping and autodumping with DFHack — no dice.
I did get haunted for a bit, but a memorial slab put an end to that.
“How does one posit an undeniable and open war that the vast majority of the targets are still unaware of in a single paragraph?”
One of the most finely-honed skills I have noted in the MRA crowd is the ability to say mutually contradictory things in one sentence, so doing so in a single paragraph is very routine and unworthy of any special notice. In fact, you might say that the MRAs have raised self-contradiction to an art form.
@Bernardo: the advantages of having money are almost endless, My wife used a home-equity loan to buy the apartment house across the street, and frequently credit card companies would offer her deals on the pattern of “transfer 10,000 to an account with us and get 0% [or 1% or 2%] interest for a year — at a time when home-equity rates were, say, 6%. Obviously they were hoping you’d make the transfer and then leave it there when the rate went up — but my wife would always shift the debt back to the home-equity loan (or to another credit card from some other company foolish enough to try to take advantage of her). Right now I’m using a credit card that pays a 5% rebate on groceries and gasoline – obviously they are losing money on the deal but hoping we won’t pay off the whole thing each month and they’ll get to collect their obscene interest. Fat chance — my wife would rather jump from 30 feet into a pool full of legos that pay credit card interest.
I always buy staple items on sale in large quantities — 100 rolls of toilet paper or 100 cans of tuna. This sort of saving is only available to people who have cash or can pay off their credit card every month, because the credit card interest cancels out the savings at the store.
I have lived from paycheck to paycheck, and it’s just amazing the money you can save if you have enough money to take advantage of opportunities. The playing field is really very strongly tilted towards those who don’t really need it
I’m actually reminded of the Cheap and Good cookbook, which was promoted by bunches of social justice types as excellent advice for how people on food stamps can eat good, healthy meals on a very tight budget.
This thing was so well intended, but it was so privileged in perspective. Like, how many poor people do you have to know to know that most working poor don’t actually have 2 free hours a day to cook? Opportunity costs are real. Even if you manage to scrounge out 2 hours between working multiple jobs, having to get to them and home on public transportation, and probably also caring for at least one other dependent person, do you really want to spend that time on your feet in the kitchen? That sounds like an excellent way to burn yourself the hell out really fast.
I can’t even count the number of very well-intentioned, very civic-minded people who couldn’t see beyond their own privilege with respect to this cookbook.
@PoM
I did some research in low-income areas and food accessibility and that was exactly what I learned. I was pretty shocked at all the things I took for granted. To add to what you’ve said, there’s also the cost of using gas or electricity assuming the meal is being cooked on a stove or in an oven.
It should come at no surprise that fast food becomes the meal of choice low-income areas.
I’d imagine that cookbook costs money.
I know dozens of ways to make chicken ramen taste different than just the plain package stuff. Mostly with condiments you can grab from fast food joints, cheap veggies and different cooking methods. I could put these online for free.
Oh lord, I typed until my fingers hurt arguing about this exact thing with a staunch libertarian who for some reason was a regular at Fred Clark’s Slacktivist site a couple of years ago.
No matter what we said to him, he continued to insist that The Poors could eat better if only they took personal responsibility for themselves and spent lots of time and energy (not to mention money) they didn’t have on cooking for themselves.
And I’ve seen other people say they won’t eat anything they don’t cook for themselves, because that way they’re sure of what goes into their food. Well, bully for you, you time-haver. Go and have that time and that money you also have and spend it the way you want to. Just don’t try to say everyone should try to live your way.
The cookbook is actually a free download, and the author got some money on Kickstarter to print up copies to distribute (for free) to people who didn’t have computer access.
It’s actually Good and Cheap, rather than Cheap and Good as I originally said. You can find it here. As you browse through it, think about how long some of these recipes will take to make. Some are quick and simple. Others exhaust me just reading through them, and I do, in fact, have two hours I could dedicate toward cooking every day. I just don’t want to spend them that way, because cooking is a fucking chore.
The “price per serving” is listed on every recipe, and note how your time is valued at $0.
One way to value time is to ask, “How much would someone have to pay me to spend 2 hours every day cooking their meals?” That answer is going to vary from person to person, but it’s never going to be $0.
@PoM @Moocow
A lot of my friends and colleagues don’t understand why I hate Jamie Oliver so much, but this is exactly the reason why. My sister once gave me one of his books for students, which he prefaced by saying “I know how it is to be a student and live on a tight budget, so here are my recipes for this situation.” The very next page presented a list of spices you have to always have ready in your household. It included effing lemongrass and other exotic stuff.
A few years later, he started his “School Dinners” program. While of course Tony Blair jumped on the opportunity to present himself as caring about food safety, the whole thing was a huge neoliberal sham. The program forced canteens to buy more expensive food which was more time-consuming to prepare, while neither enhancing budgets nor giving canteen workers more time and money. The result was that angry, overworked staff, long queues and hungry kids. When mothers tried to remedy the situation by bringing sandwiches to their kids in school, they were ridiculed and shamed as “junk food moms”.
The smug expression on Olivers face as he rummaged through American fridges, in a continuation of the TV show on English school, made me really aggressive. Asshole.
“Throughout history the one thing men are good at is responding to threats, whether they are real or not.”
Yeah, we have lots of experience around here with men responding to threats that are not real.
seriously, why would you even say… nevermind.
Which is of course, total bs. To be sure what goes into your food, you’ll need to invest even more time to research organic and other labels, or the farm where you buy your stuff.
Oh my~
I know is off topic but I can’t resist, anyone up for starting a Community fort? Pretty please? I’d like to get !!DWARFED!! :3
@Falconer The whole corpse not being moved might be because it’s forbidden or just too low on the job priority list. I know I have had that problem before it just has been a long time since I last played to remember how to help with that. Either that or all your free coffins are being occupied by cats.
On topic, the only reason their mantrum is contained in the internet rather than on the streets is because they know their support doesn’t exist in places where they might be held accountable for the bullshit they say and do.
Well, then we’ve got GOOD NEWS for ya, overly-catastrophising MRA guy. 😛
Hey, Masculine Justice!
Yes?
Someone posted a feminist meme over the internets.
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/000/578/1234931504682.jpg
Another thing to remember is that cooking takes space. Many apartments have ridiculously small kitchens with pretty much no counter space and not much room to store a variety of pots, pans, spices, etc.
With the big caveat that I’m not a native speaker… Isn’t this fairly spot on, if you replace “men” with “MRA:s”? As I’ve understood it, the saying “when all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” points to someone who tries to apply the same solution or analysis to every single problem he encounters, because he’s so fond of his solution or analysis that he starts to picture every problem in a way that fits it. And MRA:s certainly applies the same analysis (it’s a feminazi conspiracy/war on men) to everything.