Men’s Rights Activists and other antifeminists love playing “gotcha” — demanding answers to questions designed to make feminists look hypocritical or illogical or just plain dumb.
Trouble is, despite their fondness for the “gotcha” game, most MRAs and antifeminists just aren’t very good at it. Their questions, often based on gross misunderstandings, tend to reveal less about the alleged hypocrisies of feminists than they reveal about their own profound ignorance of feminism.
Let’s take a look at a few of these failed gotcha memes, collected from a couple of antifeminst Facebook pages and elsewhere online and making use of the popular philosoraptor meme template
Well, that would be because women have been systematically oppressed for thousands of years; in order to get to equality, we need to focus on the things that have held women back. It’s the same reason that the civil rights movement fought for the rights of black people instead of white people.
If you think it’s wrong to call oneself a feminist instead of a humanist or equalist or whatever, why do you support something called the Men’s Rights movement?
Uh, because fighting for the “rights” of a group of people who already have more than their fair share of privileges is backwards and silly? Because MRAs are less interested in making life better for men than they are in making things worse for women? Because most MRAs are ridiculous?
Uh, because they don’t? Feminists do sometimes point out that the overwhelming majority of rapists are men, but they don’t call all men rapists.
Er, what? That doesn’t make any sense. Among other things, ‘rapists” and “whores” aren’t equivalent categories, given that the latter category involves consensual sex and the former involves nonconsensual sex.
Do you not understand how adjectives work? When feminists talk about “toxic masculinity” they don’t mean that masculinity itself is inherently toxic any more than someone referring to a “red car” means that all cars are red. Some kinds of masculinity can be toxic; that’s what feminists are taking about when they talk about “toxic masculinity. As the Geek Feminism wiki explains it, “toxic masculinity … refers to the socially-constructed attitudes that describe the masculine gender role as violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth.
I don’t know why so many MRAs still don’t understand this; it’s certainly been explained to them more than enough times. And do MRAs not know how to use Google? That Geek Feminism definition I quoted above is literally the first result you get if you Google “toxic masculinity.”
And now we’re just getting silly. First off, fictional characters don’t hijack franchises; they’re fictional characters. Second, since when do movie franchises belong to a certain gender? There’s no movie law that says ghostbusters have to all be dudes, just because that’s what they were in the original Ghostbusters films.
Everyone has the right to defend themselves, but “hitting someone back” in a punitive manner is an escalation of the fight, and that’s not a good thing. Also, why are you putting “woman” in scare quotes?
I can’t even. What?
Good grief, that response is fucking endless and often borderline incomprehensible.
You’re remarkably bad at debating, so it’s not surprising you spent a lot of free time hectoring people in the irredeemable cesspool that is YouTube.
She was awesome but not a time traveler so Kat’s critique of your ahistorical argle-bargle stands.
Not really. MRAs didn’t invent anti-feminism and isn’t a functional movement, but feel free to keep fantasizing about feminism’s imminent demise and babbling at people on Youtube.
First, people don’t primarily experience media through YouTube. Second, major studios own companies like Maker Studios that provide Youtube content.
If you don’t go to movies and only watch Youtube, why do you care about Ghostbusters and other Hollywood remakes at all?
SFHC,
Sorry for the delayed response to your request. For a while I couldn’t remember which thread it was on, and once Trigun showed up this thread moved so fast that I missed it when I came looking for it. Once I did find it I wondered whether any good could come of answering or if I should just slink off and let it lie. That would obviously have reinforced your opinion of my truthfulness but I’m not sure I can do anything about that anyway.
I’m a little saddened because I respect you. I think you’re smart, funny, principled, insightful, creative, and often kind. I had thought you respected me. We’ve had conflicts in the past; I’ve apologized for some and assumed we tacitly agreed to disagree on others. I knew we don’t hold the same values. I didn’t know you think I’m deceitful.
You actually posted in the thread I was thinking of; you and I were more or less at each other’s throats. It was a rolling multi-person multi-issue trainwreck, so only with subjective judgment is it possible to say what it was “about.” If you don’t recognize it from my description, you probably don’t agree with my interpretation, so linking it will only confirm your belief that I am untruthful.
I other people want to see it, I post the link. Otherwise, I don’t see any point in you and I re-litigating a flame thread in which we were on different sides.
Yeah, that line smelled super disingenuous from the start. Obviously he meant he listened and believed and then acted, but he’s just a poor widdle ex-fundie that only knows how to listen and believe (and act) and be sorry and it’s not his fault that feminists don’t want him to listen and believe (and act on) the things that they say so it’s really not even worth mentioning because how could he be held responsible for listening and believing (and acting on) things that other people said?
Sorry, sorry, but WHERE exactly does it say anywhere that WOMEN CAUSED THESE THINGS? Because that’s news to me! If you were saying, oh I don’t know, that “because of the societal norms and gender roles of the day, women and men expected certain things of each other and those things were often unfair and there are still many gender roles that need to be crushed” I’d be more with you on this. But you’re insisting somehow women are the cause! As though somehow through being second class citizens we somehow controlled men. As though feminists blow their load at the thought of men dying in the workplace.
Did it ever occur to you in your years of servitude to the feminist overlords that feminism isn’t only about legal rights, but about how society functions as a whole? You can cry all you want about how it’s illegal to beat your wife, but it’s still deeply deeply ingrained in our culture that no doesn’t always mean no, that women’s bodies in public are now available to the public. It’s still a fact that trans woman and women of color are still discriminated against and are at incredible risk. Shit doesn’t just disappear from a culture cuz women got the right to vote, aight? And worrying about how the poor menz are fairing not being able to touch my butt on the metro nowadays isn’t going to fix a damn thing.
If you want things to be better for guys, too, cuz there are many ways in which our current society hurts them, then maybe you should quit pretending like somehow feminism is ruining the world and stop associating yourself with people who literally argue that women shouldn’t be able to vote.
Also, stop bringing up fifty shades of vomit like anyone here actually idolizes that book. It isn’t the secret feminist playbook and no one here is to blame for it so chill already.
Excuse the long post, but that crap made my head spin.
CONFIDENTIAL TO THREE GUNS: I don’t think you realized this, but when I put you on moderation I was also giving you a secret challenge.
Had you responded politely and concisely to the temporary ban, and indicated that you understood the rules and that in the future you would refrain from posting thousand-word comments multiple times a day, I would have let you post again.
Instead you responded with a 1400-word comment that I’m not going to post or even read.
Which is just what I expected you would do. You guys are so predictable, both in what you say and in what you do.
David – He’s really gone? Forever?! I think I love you now.
1400 words? To Rigmarole Town for the troll!
And here I went and brushed up on my knowledge of Emma Goldman. And female genital mutilation, which Three Guns seemed to think was the equivalent of male circumcision. No, no, no to the power of infinity.
Thanks, David! The cat pic makes me laugh every time I see it–unlike the Trump pic.
Awwww, and here I thought I could’ve asked Three Guns ALL THE SOURCES. I even made a 28-points-long list!
As retaliation against David banning Three Guns, I’m gonna sealion all over this thread.
http://assets.worldwildlife.org/photos/561/images/story_full_width/sea-lion-threat-07162012-HI_257952.jpg.jpg