Most conspiracy theorists are surprisingly uncreative in their choice of villains, blaming all the ills in the world on one or more alleged evildoers in a fairly short list: the Jews, the government, the Illuminati, space aliens, and a handful of other familiar suspects.
One Men’s Rights activist wants to add a few more names to the list: the women’s magazines Glamour, Allure, Self, Vogue, and, most terrifyingly, Teen Vogue.
So how did the MRA in question — Dan Perrins of Ontario, Canada — arrive at this particular conclusion? Earlier this year, you see, GQ magazine ran a rather scathing piece by investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet about the Men’s Rights movement, centering around the weekend Sharlet spent amongst the convention-goers at A Voice for Men’s first (and probably only) International Conference for Men’s Issues last year.
Perrins made a brief appearance in the article. He’s the guy Sharlet quoted as saying, about an ex, that “I should have killed the bitch five years ago … I’d be out by now.”
But that’s ancient history now, because there’s a new GQ outrage that has the MRAs up in arms: namely, a cartoon depicting a Men’s Rights Activist as a loudmouthed middle-aged guy that no one wants to listen to.
Now, it’s true that not every single MRA is a loudmouthed middle-aged guy that no one wants to listen to. Obviously, some of them aren’t middle-aged.
But Perrins thinks something more sinister is afoot. In his mind, this cartoon doesn’t reflect the normal revulsion most human beings feel when confronted with a Men’s Rights activist. No, in his mind the GQers are doing the bidding of their evil puppetmasters.
@Calanthecritic @VictorZenMHRA @deanesmay @AVoiceForMen @GQMagazine some background on who owns #GQ pic.twitter.com/pwyc4cE2Ed
— Dan Perrins (@BlackBeard20096) July 11, 2015
While Perrins’ screenshot is a little blurry, he’s highlighting a list of the women’s “fashion and lifestyle” magazines owned by Conde Nast: Vogue, W, Glamour, Allure, Self, and the dreaded … Teen Vogue.
Apparently, in order to appease the vicious feminazis that read and run these magazines, the editors of Conde-Nast-owned GQ need to do all they can to denigrate the true male heroes of the Men’s Rights movement.
Presumably, all other Conde Nast magazines need to follow the feminazi editorial dictates of GLAMOUR and SELF and TEEN VOGUE as well. In other words, don’t expect to find any positive accounts of, say, Dean Esmay’s groundbreaking Twitter campaign against cavernous feminist vaginas, or whatever other important human rights activism that the MRAs are up to today, in the pages of Architectural Digest or Bon Appétit.
But wait. What is this I see in the list of Conde Nast publications?
Is it possible that the feminazis at Teen Vogue aren’t really the ones in charge, but are merely a front for the true puppetmasters?
Could it be that all of Conde Nast is in the pockets of BIG GOLF?
I was also accused of being a soc of an even older troll, but I’m not, and even David called me by my real first account name on the last thread. I expect to be banned, and I know that trolling is not healthy, so please pray to the Lord that I will be able to overcome it.
Unless someone beats me to it, I’m going to email David when I get home. One last chance Stranded, if you don’t want to be banned, be more interesting.
I got it.
It is almost like they are unaware that media, like many other industries, is made up of a few companies that own properties ranging from newspapers to television stations. I would post that infographic about the 6 companies controlling 90% of the media but looking it up got a lot of anti-semetic and paranoid search results so it might be completely inaccurate. Regardless, it is true that companies often have their hands in multiple jars at once.
Except their ties to this are strenuous at best. We weren’t mentioning the Freemasons seriously, only in jest.
It’s not an invitation for you to go off on a tangent.
Sorry, ye olde “shaming women is anti-feminist!” shtick isn’t going to work here. Feminism isn’t putting women up on untouchable pedestals, but rather saying that women can be wrong too, and holding them up to the same standards we hold ourselves too. Women aren’t always right, nor are they always deferred to by feminists. We are equal-opportunity Mockers of Silliness.
If we think you’re spouting off illogical silly nonsense, you will be called out for it, regardless of gender.
However, if you want to defend them, go right ahead.
“I’m going to use bigger words! Maybe then they won’t mock me!”
Nice try, but no.
And I fail to see how we’re being “philosophically inconsiderate” to Christians. If by which you mean “Not agreeing with me and bowing to me and my superior religion”, then yes.
However, I’ll leave you to the Christian among us to deal with this nonsense. I have no desire to deal with it.
What kind of ass-backwards thinking is this?
One, Quality Over Quantity, dude. If you don’t have any good, interesting ideas, then you’ve got jack fucking shit.
Two, this isn’t an idea generation session. It’s a discussion on the topic of David’s article. Either get on topic (and no, not discussing conspiracy as a whole, just this specific one), or GTFO.
Whelp, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
And your problem is that you’re very boring and unoriginal.
OT Lookit:
http://love-pro-choice.tumblr.com/post/123975571162/turningtricksbreakingdicks-voguedissent
Goddamn you typo mammoth.
I think my jitters are getting worse.
mildlymagnificent: My solution to the “do I have to read the comments?” thing at the ABC website is this – I put 5c in a jar every time I run across a comment by someone who appears to do most of their thinking with their head up their arse (or who appears to have outsourced their thinking to the Murdoch media, which is a pretty close analogue). At the end of the year, the jar gets opened, and I put the money toward either buying booze (for cooking), buying fun stuff for me, or making charitable donations to charities I support but which the annoying commenters would find repugnant. My partner has come to refer to the sound of the money hitting the jar as me reading “Things that Make Meg Mad dot com”.
Ah, yes, magazines that dedicate their time to telling women every way in which they’re failing with regards to men and their looks are all part of the feminazi conspiracy. It makes perfect sense if you don’t think so hard about it.
@opium4themasses,
Oh for the love of God. The judge is giving him credit for admitting what he did, not initially to the authorities but to his ex-girlfriend over email, and decides that the fact that he unintentionally provided the prosecution with enough evidence to prove their case means that he shouldn’t go to jail? What the ever-loving fuck? Now they can’t punish the perpetrator if its his fault that the prosecution had a case? In what world does that reasoning make sense?
Glamour sometimes has marginally feminist content. Or at least they used to. I haven’t read in awhile. But that hardly means Conde Naste is a feminist company. It means they recognized that young single women tend to be one of the more progressive demographics and that’s Glamour’s target audience. So they created a product to appeal to them.
I’m also grateful to YM for having better sex ed than my school did in their annual sexual health issue. I don’t think they were Conde Naste though.
Problematic as women’s magazines are, they aren’t completely worthless. The manosphere wouldn’t have an issue with them if they were. It’s pretty dumb to think they’re more driven by ideology than profit though.
@Stranded in Babylon
A goal you could theoretically reach in the future if you stopped doing all of the things you currently do here.
…because only an effeminate mangina could care about such trivial, gendered-slur-pleasing things as fashion, good grooming…or articles worth reading.
I hope everyone who is preparing to watch Steven Universe or Gravity Falls has padded their feels for protection.
Yeah, Conde Nast (more precisely its parent company, the even more massive Advance Publications) owns well-known feminist stronghold Reddit. It also owns about half the magazines still on newsstands, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Wired. How awesome would it be if all these things were run by the feminist conspiracy? I want to see Feminist Wired.
@Shaenon
Fired?
I’ll send you a photo next time I have coffee.
Like seriously
Katz, yep, it was Pro Patria. And I have granted him his wish to be banned, for his own good and ours.
Of course women’s mags are feminist! They teach us how to do makeup and outline “the 50 best sex moves to drive him wild in bed”. Raping men by deceiving them with make-up, and steering women away from the natural female instinct to lay perfectly still and think of the queen during sex, are major tools of male oppression in our matriarchy.
Luckily, these magizines have never been able to make sex with real women better than porn. Imagine the chaos if sex with women *was* enjoyable to men, oh the horror! Dogs and cats together! Tarantulas and wasps being friends! Red plaid pants paired with striped yellow shirts! Oh, the matriarchy would be unstoppable!
Remember kids, even a single shred of female self-esteem is one shred too many. All those size zero models, and gender enforcing norms, are tricks!
As far as I could ever figure out, the “women’s magazines” are basically the marketing division of the cosmetics industry — which, of course, profits from making women feel as negative as possible about their bodies. Occasionally a good article manages to sneak past the editors.
Sadly, I have to wait a little while before I can see the new eps. That means no Tumblr for me!
On a happier note, Beloved said she wanted to give Steven Universe a try, so yay! At least we will have each other’s shoulder to cry on.
It’s a little more complicated than that. Women’s magazines were a big part of making female sexuality mainstream and something we could talk about.
Before the internet, women’s magazines were the only place easily accesseable by the masses where there were essays written by women about our experiences. The only places where women’s issues were talked about.
As I said earlier, I learned more about STIs and birth control methods from YM than I did from my parents or at school. And I lived in a quite progressive community and family there were other girls who needed that information even more than I did.
These magazines were the first place I learned about a variety of feminist issues.
Yes, women’s magazines are problematic as hell. Because, yeah, they depend on advertising revenue from the cosmetics, fashion, and diet industries. So, they’ll be an article on one page about the dangers of starvation diets and eating disorders and then pages of ads and photo spreads featuring skinny models.
But I’m a little uncomfortable with all the backlash against them. For the reasons I’ve already outlined. I think it’s tinged with unintentional classism. Women’s magazines are imperfect sources for learning about feminism, but they’re something that women everywhere in the country, regardless of education or socioeconomic can access. Not everyone can go to college and take women’s studies courses and learn feminist theory. Not everyone has the wherewithal to seek out good books on feminism on their own. With the internet, women’s magazines are not so important anymore because people can learn feminism 101 online without the contradictory fluff pieces about cosmetic surgery, makeup, and fad diet books you find in the magazines. But before everybody had internet access, women’s magazines were all a lot of women had.
I also don’t like the implication that women who read them are brainwashed or something.
This isn’t entirely directed at you, GOM. I see a derisive attitude towards magazines in feminist places and it rubs me the wrong way. I think it really comes from a place of privilege and is a little condescending and I just wanted to explain why.
Eh, sorry, WWTH, but I’m going to have to disagree here. Teenage me always saw the magazines as coming from a place of privilege and being condescending – the problematic stuff you mentioned just felt as if it was talking down to, shaming and laughing at me for not being thin and pretty enough. No amount of genuinely good articles could make up for how awful I felt about myself every time I read one.
But hey, herding cats and all that. Nothing wrong with different perspectives. ^^;
Falconer, come lie on the floor with me. I need someone to mop up the tears after that last episode of Steven Universe coupled with that episode of Gravity Falls.