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?
I KNEW IT YOU’RE A TIMELORD
We either scared away Three Guns–or he’s busy reading Emma Goldman’s 1,000-page autobiography.
I’m back baby.
I think I’m going to skip around some tonight, so I don’t miss the good stuff before this thread falls off the front page.
Oh, what’s the story about me going to be this time!
Nope.
I was a former fundy kid. When I came to feminism, I was floaty, naive, and kind of a wreck. I felt like everyone had to explain everything to me, regardless of what it was. And I believed people I trusted without question. Because that’s what I did when I was in the church.
I acutally did pretty well with girls. Thank you very much. But I was a cute punk boy in a band.
In short, I just listened and believed. That’s all I did. And when feminist women started to hate me for it, I couldn’t think of a better response than listening and believing harder. And harder. And harder. And harder.
And then I found the love of my life.
then I wouldn’t have been a feminist for ten years.
You are aware Dave wrote and entirely separate set of rules for MRAs, right? I read them before I posted. Ultimately, if I get to post or not, it’s at his discretion. So far, I’m impressed.
I promise to make fun of his man boobs less. But only because they don’t hold a candle to TJ’s magnificent rack.
One day the two pairs of man breats will clash. Then all shall fall into darkness and fire.
Fixed this for you.
It’s spelled females.
against the Suffragettes.
No, actually, if I’m making any fallacy it would be appealing to nature. There weren’t traditions in place as we understand them when we hunted the mammoth.
Here’s why I’m not making an appeal to nature.
It sucks.
The fact that men have a biological context of disposablity means we’re not quite human to you. This is why feminism outright dismisses any issues pertaining to men, even to the point where it is now plummeting in support for doing so. This is why I’m faced with constant assumptions about me on here, when you people you could just ask me. But I’m not human. I’m a villian in a story you’re writing. Who cares who I am? Who cares if I die? Who cares if I actually ever lived.
That is terrible for men. And while it’s something that can’t be completely changed, it is something that can be mitigated.
Egalitarianism is a powerful first step.
There are almost no primary sources regarding this from the 17th century. Much of what we have comes from when English common law was written down in the 18th century. This made it a crime to hit your wife in any way harder basically than a slap, and that was punishable by whipping. In England this law was largely unenforced among the poor, but very much held over the rich.This was the way things were in England until the mid 19th century, when Magistrates grew sickened by the level of wife battery they were seeing and began to crack down.
In America there was no such wide scale lapse, though many states gradually stopped employing medieval methods for punishing crimes. Teddy Roosevelt, as part of his reelection campaign fraught for the return of the whipping post for wife beaters at a federal level. While that didn’t happen, it prompted several states to reenact the practice.
The last state to whip a man for wife beating was Delaware in 1952. (I said mid fifties before. My bad.) It was dismissed for being brutal and ultimately self defeating.
Source
Source
Source
Source
“Sensible Roosevelt–A whipping-post for wife-beaters” Library of Congress
But if a man was beaten by his wife, he was tied to a donkey backwards while the community threw things at him.
men were beaten and shamed for beating their wives, and men were beaten and shamed if they were beaten by their wives! So tell me where the patriarchy is in this!! Because I don’t see it.
Feminism didn’t exist yet.
And I don’t blame women for doing this, because they didn’t tie the men to the post or hoist them onto the donkey. It was other men.
The need to see other men, the need to see ourselves worthless and disposable particularly if we’re failures at serving women is inborn into every man. And it’s why this website exists.
Clearly lacking.
Really. Hmm, polls are showing feminism has experienced a pretty severe drop in support in just the last few years. And too often it’s women and former feminists who are who are coming to our movement. People like Cassie Jaye.
Our movement has a mandate, and is articulating something they want just as much as we do.
Don’t it sting?
I think, with very limited exceptions, everyone has the right to speak just as awful to everyone else as they see fit.
We pretty much have YouTube on lock down now. The main reason I’m here is because I love debating, and I can’t find a good debate there anymore… You get how huge that is right?
Mike Stephenson, my favorite Honey Badger!
Ok no, that’s a lie. Actually my favorite Honey Badger is Anna Cherry. Because how can you not? When I first saw her as sexy Vivian James at that Calgary Expo, I was like oh, no, here we go. Using a sexy woman to get support. But no, she’s incredibly smart and well spoken. She’s got a neuroscience degree, and she’s basically their science girl. And her Twitter feed is… very fun and not safe for work…
It’s not really possible for women it have more rights then they already do without pushing this into 1984 territory.
Judgey’s on right leaning side of the MRA a sphere thing, and like most MRA’s I’m a left liberation. Possibly still an Anarchist. So I don’t really read her. But she makes a pretty good case there. Dave only manages to take pop shots at. (No Dave, I’m sorry, the vote is tied to conscription. Just because post-Vietnam it’s become politically unpopular doesn’t make it any less a part of the vote.) Women are very much drains on the system. There are currently no government programs aimed exclusively at men, but hundreds aimed exclusively at women. This includes 11 programs from the VA for women, including one for female homeless vets.
You get into the immigration thing, and it starts to get all right-wingy. But all she did there agree with the conclusion of that Telegraph article, which Dave doesn’t challenge. So his refutation of her case is pretty weak.
Look, fighting against women’s suffrage is stupid and it’s never going to happen. But if she wants to join the storied ranks of female anti-Suffragests, I’m not going to stop her. Why should I?
Is this about that Roosh V thought experiment again? Because even Dave here has admitted that’s not what Roosh meant.
As for abandoning children… Why is it ok that this is a right women have that men lack. Having a child is a unilateral series of decisions by the mother. The father has no say in the decision.
What makes this even a feminist issue? Shouldn’t this be a personal matter between the couple that either does or doesn’t not wish to become parents? Help me out on this.
No. And women shouldn’t have the right to hit men. And then stab men. And then scratch men. And then when he tries to leave and he knocks into herf, women shouldn’t have the insanity of the Duluth Model come in and place him under arrest and declare him to be a “toxic male.”
Well, only if she’s barefoot. Oh, or in a cute little apron.
No one, very very few, MRAs are traditionalists. The failure of the traditional role is why we’re here. The only way we can hope to fix it is with a new stronger system that both respects the fact that we are women and we are men with different wants needs and desires, and that appeals to both equally. That’s what egalitarianism is trying to find.
You did this one already.
No you haven’t.
Like when you guys bullied that Earl Silverman to death.
Define covered.
Nope. I was going to point out how the only study which actually relates to how seriously women’s health concerns are takes is a decade and a half old. Information that old doesn’t show us anything.
And then I was going to do this:
Take it away, shitlord…
No. You’re making up your own definitions for words, and I’d rather stick to the dictionary as much as is possible.
controdicts
Oh. Ok. I get it. Men must be constantly updated on new feminist definitions of the word “consent.”
Sort of a Ministry of Love thing.
Shouldn’t we instead leave it up to the woman and the man involved. And feminism just stays out of the bedroom?
Fixed that for you.
And women are going to rape men. And men are going to rape men. And women are going to rape women. And everyone needs to take basic step to protect themselves.
It’s call being an adult.
And you also seem like a truly reasonable human being.
Yeah, I really don’t understand how you guys justify not hearing the other side without declaring that the lord of lies works through her false tongue.
As a former fundamentalist, and a former SJW I am always concerned with the idea that I might be wrong.
WHY DO YOU THINK IT IS THAT I AM HERE.
Oh, but I must be a troll right.
Translation, do not offer you opinion if it at all relates to women, because you are a man. I’m feeling the egalitarianism of feminism right now.
Read my post about apples. This is just the only way Hollywood can find of adding new female parts without you lot jumping down their throat.
I KNEW IT
You make a romance with a weak female character, who’s she’s swooning over. A ton of men. You make a strong kick ass female character, who’s she ordering around. A ton of men.
Also, I just love it when third wavers throw out second wave media critique. What actual effect does the decisions Hollywood make matter when people primary experience with media is through YouTube?
Yeah, I don’t care.
Apparently this board is full of avid theatre fans.
Someone spent a lot of time expressing their hatred of men.
Hey do you know about something called the gender spending gap? While the gender wage gap has women earning 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, the spending gap shows that women are responsible for 75% of the dollars spent in the US. At a time when no one is saving any money at all. And that means that the average man spends about a third of his paycheck on women. Meanwhile, men are paying about 75% of the taxes into the system, and every government program that benefits one gender benefits women. Source Forbes.
Hey.
Feminazi. That’s a stupid term, who uses it.
You stole my ice-cream.
Give it back.
😉
…
Oh my god there’s more of this!?
We don’t.
When I was a child and my sister hit me, and I pushed her away, she went in the corner.
That’s a lie. My mom made us hug until we stopped hating each other.
Oh, you’ve been rambling on so long my head hearts.
But at least I’m your pumpkin. 🙂
LORD THIS TOOK TOO LONG.
This story about feminists hating a man for “listening” is one of the least believable conversion stories I’ve ever heard.
Sorry, that last post was @Paradoxical Intention
@Kat
Ok, first of all, I laughed hard at this.
Second. I am very very dyslexic. And the four minute editing window is brutal. It shows up in spellings. It shows up in things like dropping of pluralizations I don’t remember doing. My brain is a broken clockwork mess, ok? It’s an embarrassment. So please, if you read strange things from me, and you can kind of get what I meant, understand that’s what I meant. I proof read like a mother, and if I’d had more time I could have caught that.
There’s a joke in there somewhere… 🙂
Emma Goldman is my favorite classical Anarchist crush. She’s… uh… sexy… This is going to sound real, real weird, but one of my exs used to kind of look like her and used to role play as her… in the bedroom…
Emma Goldman would bristle at the being called a feminist. She’d probably hit you. Yes, she she was born after Seneca falls. That’s not important at all, but thank you. At the time she was operating, the Suffragettes were the only feminist game in town. She did not support women taking power from men any more than she supported men taking power from men.
It’s worth asking if she would have been another form of feminist if those forms existed at the time. And I don’t think she would. She definitely wouldn’t have been a sex negative second waver. She loved sex, and spent much of her time living in a brothel. I don’t think she would have been a third waver either. I don’t see her Anarchism as matching up with things like Twitter harassment initiatives.
I think she was a Free Love Women’s Libber, if she was anything.
But I don’t think that describes her and what she went through very well. She was her own. She wasn’t one of you. She wasn’t one of me. She wasn’t one of anything. She was her own. As someone cutting my own path, I have to respect that.
And I have no idea why I have the hots for her. But it was always really good… :j
I also love how he views spamming/flooding internet comment sections as some sort of meaningful victory. Just like Paulie and Juicebro have said before. The only “victory” of the MRM is that they have proven people can’t have nice things unless they want them ruined by trolls.
As someone who kind of does that: I tend to also work on other things while listening to a rant video, and sometimes people make good points in ways that I hadn’t thought of, or couldn’t think of due to stuff like privilege.
I do the same thing with podcasts as well. It makes great material to do graphic design work to because I’m not only hearing news or listening to some of my favorite people talk about things I like (The Podquisition hosted by Jim Sterling and two of his friends is pretty good) but I’m also getting work done.
But you’re right: Karen’s only stroking the egos of the MRAs, she’s not there to challenge the system, if only because that’ll get her ousted in a heartbeat because feeemale.
_____________________________________________
Now, on to Trolly-Os: Most of that Teal Deer is self-wanking, repetative bullshit, so I’m going to skip most of it, as you’re clearly not willing to listen to anything but the sound of your own keyboard on some issues, so I’d rather not waste my energy on it.
However, there are a few bits that I’d like to point out and address, and I’m putting these in the order I find them as I scroll up and down:
Such martyr. Much Sacrifice. Such wow.
Except there are feminists who also work towards helping men, and there are quite a few men who are also feminists who also focus on men’s issues. Just because feminism isn’t for men specifically (because it’s focus is on women, who have traditionally had the short end of the stick), doesn’t mean feminists “don’t care” and “don’t want to help men”.
Women (and feminists in general who identify as all kinds of genders) are complex human beings, perfectly capable of caring about more than one thing at a time. Just because we’re not talking about men right now doesn’t mean I hate them and don’t care about anything bad that happens to them.
You said so yourself you were one (though I’m still not buying your story, because, let’s face it, there’s no way to prove it’s true), and for all we know, you could be lying. It’s easier to assume you’re full of shit, because all you’ve given us is shit, and we’re not going to poke through it to find the good bits, because they’re still covered in shit.
Oh? Really? I wasn’t aware you knew my experiences better than I do!
Clearly I just need to shut up and listen to you because you apparently can remember my own life and experiences and things I’ve seen and read better than me and my silly little lady brain! [/sarcasm]
You can fuck off with that shit. I know what I’ve read. I know what I’ve experienced. Don’t fucking pretend like I’m just “misunderstanding” when MRAs blatantly say shit.
You’re on an entire fucking blog about MRAs spouting this exact nonsense. Do some reading.
Oh, and don’t fucking bother shifting the goalposts either. No one cares if you’re not exactly the same as every other MRA, you’re still supporting them and identifying as one.
And yet, you refuse to listen to anything anyone has to say, and instead resort to being a ‘splainy, troll-faced, condescending, horseradish sandwich.
Yeah, I’m totally convinced that you’re concerned with the idea you might be wrong, and that’s why you’re here. [/sarcasm]
So, instead of maybe making the world a less shitty place for everyone to live in by actually explaining to people what consent actually is and how rape isn’t just “stranger danger” back alley stuff, you’d rather just say that “Well, shit happens!” and not do anything about it?
Such egalitarian. Much human rights. Such wow. You must care so much about rape victims. [/sarcasm]
Here’s a fun story: I was sexually abused when I was twelve all the way until I was fourteen by my stepfather, and this includes several instances of rape over the course of those two years. (This is a story I’ve relayed a few times to people here as well, in a few different contexts.)
Tell me: How was I supposed to “protect” myself from that? What would be the “adult” thing little twelve year old me could have done to protect myself from someone who was supposed to be my parent, and who I was terrified of because he had beaten me before over smaller shit?
Oh, wait. You don’t care about rape victims and would rather just enable rapists by blaming victims for not “protecting” themselves enough because it’s the “adult” thing to do. My bad.
Actual translation: You coming in here and trying to tell us what Ghostbusters was about like we’ve never seen it and/or don’t understand it is extremely demeaning and condescending because some of us are actually Ghostbusters fans, despite being women.
Because movies are still a billion dollar industry and media still reflects the values of that time period. So, if we have a bunch of movies where women are treated as shitty props, that must mean that we value women as shitty props.
Just because you don’t watch movies doesn’t mean the rest of the world doesn’t either. Hell, some people watch movies on YouTube. Shocking, I know. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you the world doesn’t revolve around your life experiences.
Except I’m really not.
“Men aren’t stupid and are perfectly capable of understanding what consent means, but we’ve been working with a faulty definition of consent, and maybe we need to update it because it’s clearly not working.”
I see no contradiction.
http://babalublog.com/wpr/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Foghorn-Leghorn-Thats-a-joke-son-You-missed-it-Flew-right-by-ya.jpg
It’s a joke we have around here. We elongate the “e” in “females” because it sounds more sinister that way, considering many manospherians make it sound like a filthy word.
You could have asked instead of assuming that I’m unaware of what spell check is. But I’m just a silly feeemale with a silly little lady brain, apparently!
Bash a Violent Bitch Month.
Oh, and I’ve had several conversations with men (some of whom were MRAs) who asked me when they can hit women if I’m so for “equality”.
But apparently, I don’t know what I’m talking about because Guns here seems to be the Spokesman of the MRAs, and I’m just totally misunderstanding everything because I’m apparently stupid and have no reading comprehension or verbal comprehension, so I need him to explain it to me! [/sarcasm]
Because we have “heard the other side”.
Because we’ve seen enough of her writings, videos, and blog posts on AVfM to know what she’s all about, and to speculate what she might say about a given subject.
Because we figure we’re aware of her stance on things considering things she’s wrote about in the past.
Because sometimes “hearing the other side” consists of someone telling you you deserve to be treated as less than human because of your gender and what an awful person you are and how you’re just the devil incarnate because you’re not willing to be a housewife and let men hit you.
_____________________________________________
Okay, I’m done. This one’s getting a little too boring for my tastes. Most of his shit was just “I’ll just repeat myself until they understand that I’m right!”
Also also, now he can’t stop talking about hos boner. Classic. The MRM – spamming internet comment sections with boner talk since, what, 2006?
@Imaginary Petal
You’re never going to believe me, no matter what I say, because who I am doesn’t match up with your story.
It wasn’t that kind of listening. It was listening and believing. It was letting women take more and more charge, even if it didn’t make sense to me.
Me: Why is it you want to cook and clean so much. I want to do it so you can get out of those gender roles.
Girlfriend at the time: That sexist of you even to say.
Me: Oh… Sorry… Um… Sorry… Sorry… Ten minutes of sorry.
It was very easy for me to be in that role because I’d been in that role ever since I was born.
Listen, like I said in the long post is long post above, I came here from YouTube when the debate dried up there. Go ask Jenny McDermott who I debated with most, if she thinks I’m a former feminist. We shared a lot about each other’s lives, and she’s the first sub on my channel.
Who I am doesn’t match up with your story, and your story is way more important than me.
You know how wild animals claim territory by pissing on everything?
(Maybe that’s why so many MRAs believe in evopsych.)
Hahaha. Yeah, now it’s starting to sound more believable. Jesus fucking christ, dude.
Why is this even a question you feel like you need to ask?
Because Paul Elam wrote an article mocking something horrific in Jezebel? Jesus fucking christ! You people are convinced you’re the only ones who have souls. You’re wrong!
@weirwoodtreehugger
Oh I am so sorry that baby mutilation doesn’t rise to a level of concern for oh so egalitarian feminism.
Genuinely. Because if you guys gave a crap the practice would already be ended.
Yes! I oppose genital mutilation in all it’s forms! There is no difference between a boy or a girl or an adult woman being mutilated!
The only people who see a difference here are you people.
utterly horrifying
#NotAllBabyMutilation
Do we need to remind the fanboy that Karen Straughan is in favor of men beating women?
“If you want a vision of the manosphere, imagine an anus sharting on a feminist blog’s comment section – forever.” – George Orwell, probably.
Three Guns, you have used up your word quota for today, possibly for all time. And that’s actually a violation of the comment policy for commenters here regardless of whether they’re MRAs or not.
I mean, seriously dude, you’ve posted more words on my site than I have in the last couple of days. And I at least try to be entertaining.
Thank you, David.
I’d just like to point out as a coda that one of Three Guns’s sources had this as its site header:
The capitalisation wasn’t me; it was added, Timecube-like, by the site’s proprietor.
Strangely there wasn’t a bibliography on any of them. Such scholar. How source. Wow.
@Three Guns
Wut.
You think I read Paul Elam.
Big difference.
Off-topic:
M, was this you? Fess up.
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/375/cpsprodpb/14D6E/production/_88285358_13ec2507-138a-42eb-80b1-f27b57622710.png
@P.I.
Fair enough on all counts. I probably should’ve clarified the people I’m talking about don’t seem to be doing anything constructive at all when it comes to listening to these videos.
Like, I couldn’t imagine them writing a book or cooking a nice meal while listening to this stuff – they seem to live and breathe the internet thus just sitting and listening to something like Straughan’s videos, then talking about them in some way, is all they do.
A lot of people on Facebook I’ve argued with, for example, never seem to leave their homes and obsess over blogs at Tumblr that no one ever forced them to read. Yet they act as if it is akin to keeping up with world events by reading various (and reliable) news sources.
Holy teal deer, Batman!
And I thought he was a Gish galloper before.
I did think it was especially cute that he used the fact that YouTube comments are so terrible decent people of all genders avoid them out of disgust as evidence that they’re winning. Winning what? The contempt of everyone?
I also love how his very own conversion story contradicts itself. He claims all he ever did was listen to feminists and they hate him anyway. Then he tells a story about how he hectered his girlfriend for liking to cook and clean. Yeah, dude. That’s not really listening and believing.
My take on him is that he was always a reactionary and feminism was just some sort of brief temporary rebellion before he reverted to form. His confusion about how feminism doesn’t mean women can never cook and clean shows a real tendency toward black and white thinking. Changing gender roles doesn’t mean everyone should just be themselves. They mean the old gender roles have to be just as rigid, only reversed which means, to him that being pro feminist means men will oppressed. That’s why despite not loving traditional gender roles, feminism makes him angry.
That’s why he sees no irony in ignoring the fact that many women have died in factories trying to provide for their families. Many women have died in childbirth. But we’re so privileged and see men as subhuman because they’ve fought in wars largely started by other men.
@wwth
Exactly.
“All I did was listen and agree, and women started to hate me!”
And his example is him being extremely condescending to his girlfriend, suggesting that he – the superior, gender role free male – needed to explain her behavior to her. Fucking hell.
Dude, you did feminism wrong.
As someone who has had this conversation almost exactly with my ex, let me explain to you why she got pissed. She’s cooking and cleaning for her own reasons, not because of gender roles. Either she enjoys it or it needs to be done and she’s an adult who recognizes that it’s a bad thing to procrastinate on cleaning and that it’s cheaper to cook at home than to eat out all the time.
Instead of just offering to help, you instead offered to free her of her assigned gender roles. Don’t you see how that might be a little condescending?
Use this as a rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t behave that way towards a man, think long and hard about why you’re behaving that way towards a woman.
Yes. Strong gender roles are bad, but people are under no obligation whatsoever to break them if they don’t want to. Imagine a woman asking her husband why he works so much, she wants to do it so he can get out of those gender roles.
Boo, I missed a verbose one. They provide so much to work with.
For example, making multiple corrections of other commenters’ (apparent) mistakes (ebil, feeemales, from/for) but when someone makes a joke about the surreal “demonetization/demonization” mixup, he mentions that he’s dyslexic so that’s unfair.
Or his demand that any studies cited must be <10 years old, while defending his understanding of hunter-gatherers because he "still ha[s] the textbooks".
Or his repeated references to a well-known Dworkin misquote, despite it being refuted earlier in this very comment section. (Side-note: what is a factual piece from a feminist blog doing republished on UFOs-and-racism conspiracy site BeforeIt'sNews?)