Men’s Rights Activists learned a long time ago that the easiest way to win an argument with someone is by playing the old straw man game, ignoring what they actually believe and instead pretending that they believe something much less defensible — and much easier to rebut.
Trouble is, when you’re actually debating one of these people directly, they may point out to you that they don’t actually believe what you claim they believe. And this makes it oh so much harder to win the argument.
Luckily, MRAs have found a workaround for this little difficulty. Instead of debating real feminists who can argue back, they debate imaginary ones who say only what the MRAs allow them to say.
One quick visit to a stock photo repository and hey, presto! You’ve got yourself the following memes depicting Straw Feminists Confused About Everything.
Er, what? Feminists have the power to ban hot babes from going out in public? Do these hot babes have to make themselves less hot before they can get a walking around permit from the Department of Jealous Feminists Who Won’t Let You Go Out if You’re Too Hot?
I think I may have posted this one before, but I still don’t quite understand it. Hey MRA dudes, you’re supposed to confuse the imaginary women in your memes, not the rest of us!
This dumb little cartoon, drawn in 2003 by a dude hoping to sell a few t-shirts, has provided MRAs with thirteen years’ worth of cheap outrage so far. Congrats, MRA meme-maker, for squeezing a little bit more outrage from its desiccated corpse.
I ain’t saying she’s a golddigger but, yes, you are saying that. Again. That song is more than a decade old. Move on, dudes.
@Mrs.B – and a princely sum it is, too 🙂
FWIW, I’m made a bit queasy by attempts to ‘quantify’ oppression and inequality (kind of an oppression bingo), as hooman beans have incredibly complex identities, and obviously don’t fit neatly into clear-cut categories. However, I understand what the cupcake sale was aiming for, and given that it was temporary and strategic, I didn’t really have an issue with it.
What bothered me as I thought I’d made clear in my earlier comment was that those involved have received rape and death threats, and memes celebrating violence against women. In what particular universe is this an acceptable method of disagreement?
@Bina yea calling the cops for DV is still pretty worthless or even bad for the victim in the U.S. esp if youre black or native, but even being a white woman in a “good neighborhood” it sux.
ETA & yes that includes when the abuser is female
@ThatBear
I find that crew cabs are ideal for fieldwork, at least in my industry. Stakes and nets and hammers and nuclear densometers all fit nicely in the back, and the cab has space for field crew folks, more delicate gauges like turbidimeters, electrofishing gear, and generally things that are more expensive so they’re harder to steal. (The nuclear densometer is a bit of a odd case in this event because it is the MOST IMPORTANT THING to not lose, damage or have be stolen, because it basically results in the authorities treating that like a nuclear incident, but safety guidelines say that it’s gotta be stored as far away from people as possible during transport. So in the back it goes, and we just have to chain it to the truck when it’s not in use.)
This has been your daily irrelevant infodump.
@Alan
I don’t get those RESPECTED experts…I mean, if I’m reading about a subject I want the experts to NOT BE RESPECTED. Disrespected experts are so much more interesting and creative. 😉
Yes, but why would you want to talk about the actual hardships women face every day when you could make a meaningless gotcha about the wage gap?
Just to spell this out clearly: Dustinzeit is stating that an expected consequence of such so-called discrimination against men is death and rape threats. Dustinzeit expects that and they either condone such an outcome, or at least find it an understandable response to this so-called discrimination, or they hold those making the threats blameless, or some combination of those.
Do you… understand what the cupcake sale demonstration is about? It’s intended to show how the wage gap affects people: the men are charged more because they have more money. You get this, right? Even if you don’t agree with the argument, surely you understand what the activists are trying to say.
With that in mind, what would be demonstrated by charging women more for cupcakes? Please use the space below and answer in your own words.
P.S. Yes, I’m sure the scary women in your head would stage a violent revolution if they were overcharged for cupcakes. Honestly, how awesome would it be if feminists were as badass as MRAs fear? I kinda wish we tore shit up instead of having rational discussions and cupcake sales.
@Dustinzeit,
Hello! Welcome. I hope that I’ve caught you before you get too grumpy about things. I’ll try to be brief and tidy, so that you don’t have to spend too much time replying to me. I have a question about something you said!
Could you please point me to one? I’ve read a number of them at this point, and the only ones I’ve seen will make statements like “significance disappears when controlling for X, Y, and Z”, where the variables are things like hours worked when removing maternity leave, male vs female job choice, etc.
I understand that the argument here is that these X, Y and Z factors should be controlled-for in the results. They really should not – that would be a “Begging the Question” fallacy! Whether “social pressure to conform to gender standards” (as an example) is a component of “gender disparity in the workplace”, and if you remove this factor you are assuming your answer (that there is no bias) is true right in the design of the study!
Do you have any studies that show no wage gap while still including these important variables? I’d be very interested to see them!
Thank you much, and sorry for the length of my reply.
– S.
Oh, I know you don’t think you missed the point.
@Shaenon
I don’t care, the wage gap is a bullshit lie anyway, and one for which men are frequently blamed, when women’s choices factor into the situation much more so than you would think. I understand what they’re trying to say, and frankly, it doesn’t matter. I understand what people who talk about ‘white genocide’ mean when they blather on about ‘miscegenation,’ but I don’t agree with them and if they brought up awareness about ‘white genocide’ in public I wouldn’t care much if people got angry about it (members of the liberal left would probably be making death threats themselves).
“What would be demonstrated by charging women more for cupcakes?…”
It depends on the point one is trying to make, obviously. We could do it as a way to get back at women for constantly making men pay for things like drinks, dinner, movies, etc, or we could do it to prove that women need to watch their weight.
“Honestly, how awesome would it be if feminists were as badass as MRAs fear? I kinda wish we tore shit up instead of having rational discussions and cupcake sales.”
All the more reason you’re worth fighting against, then. The only reason you’re even bothering to have discussions and feign rationality is because you want to subjugate men to your whims and you plan to use mens’ own weapons against them. If it weren’t for the law, you’d give in to your urges and destroy things, every woman has a kaiju in her just waiting to break out in civil society.
Manufactured by who? The only ones being dramatic about it are you and your ilk.
Also, getting pissy about a protest bake sale is not exactly disputing whether or not society is sexist against women. There’s a wealth of research out there showing that it is. No amount of trolling and whining and stamping your feet counters that at all. You want to claim to that our culture isn’t misogynistic? Put up or shut up. Prove it. Don’t pretend like sending rape threats on the internet is some sort of brave truth telling. It’s not. If anything, it’s an own goal because it proves that misogyny is in fact, rampant.
These memes are not only unfunny, they’re also painfully unclever. My 4 year old niece comes up with better jokes than this “edgy” trash.
Try harder, manuresphere.
Meanwhile in real life, women pay higher prices for all kinds of things and we have yet to form hate-mob tornadoes and tear the place (well, all the places, essentially) down, although maybe that’s what we’re doing wrong.
@ contrapangloss
The one in the channel is said to be a requiem shark though, they don’t care. They will happily eat ANYTHING, no matter how mean, bony, sinewy or indigestible. Humans are just the kind of thing they like to eat, they’ll just crush our bones and digest the marrow. OM NOM NOM
If it was a great white, you’d be right to feel bad. Those want blubbery catch that doesn’t fight back and tend to swim away disappointed after having tasted something skinny or being poked in the nose.
This kinda makes the shark nerd statement even more ironic. They’re reassuring people it isn’t a great white, when in fact it’s a lot more dangerous to humans than a great white.
(At least this is what I learned as a kid from my dad’s books that were printed in the 70s, and I did not verify this from any newer sources.)
So for the wage gap- I have seen exactly *one* study that puts the wage gap for women under 25 (maybe 30?) at around 96% of men’s pay.
However- a- that’s still a gap, even though feminism is winning, and, b- one of the features of the wage gap has ALWAYS been that women and minorities get fewer and smaller raises. So it’s ALWAYS been smaller for younger women. Even if the wage gap is “closing” it’s going to be decades before we can ever be sure its “closed”.
Or maybe Dustin is just a channer troll, not like “top kek” is a giant fucking shibboleth or anything.
Aw, timed out while I was typing.
Was going to add, that’s just for white women. For women of color the wage gap is still staggering. So whenever MRA’s crow about the wage gap being gone, they’re tacitly admitting that they don’t think PoC matter.
Though, they *explicitly* admit that quite often, too.
This:
Was a response to this:
Which was a response to this:
Which was a response to this:
So, like, I don’t think you understand that you, yourself, set it up as some sort of checkmate when you said it was an example of men being discriminated against when it wasn’t. It was a college experiment in which people were sent death and rape threats, it wasn’t a real bakery or event in which men were actually being discriminated against. So, like, what was your point then? Just being a douche? “Top kek” confirms.
You know, Scildfreja, that’s a good point. Even irrespective of the fact that there still seems to be a residual difference when ‘confounding factors’ are removed (and irrespective of the fact that we don’t negotiate higher starting salaries (because if we do we’re bitches) and our starting salaries are what our raises will be based on throughout our careers), the ‘confounding factors’ are actually part of the problem.
A: ‘Women make less money than men.’
B: ‘That’s because women do less lucrative jobs/work part time/take time off to take care of children/whatever.’
A: ‘Well yes, that’s true. They’re pressured, if not actually forced, into these situations because they’re women. How does that negate my statement?’
Wait wait wait, everyone stop everything.
THERE’S A SHARK NAMED THE REQUIEM SHARK?
Does this start playing whenever it swims by?
That “top kek” comment’s got this song in my head now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7BRkuAZiRA
So, it’s not all bad, really.
@katz
He is such an obnoxious joker. You think he can’t hunt when you hear him a mile away, but I guess he doesn’t have to cause apparently fish loves Dies irae.
re: bake sale
Of course some men will deny, lie, throw tantrums and generally have every possible emotional reaction when people point out their privilege. Nothing upsets those who are used to their privilege as much as being told what they already know deep down, which is why they’re so defensive about it:
they don’t deserve any of what they have that others don’t any more than the others do. They’re not superior. There’s no law of nature or evil necessity dictating that they should have it and others should be left without.
They don’t want to see themselves as cheats and thieves. They’ve been told a Man is a glorious thing to be, so rewards naturally come with it. That Men are sorely needed, and they’re awarded respect because everyone else depends on them. That’s a much nicer thing to believe about yourself than that your group have cynically taken power for yourselves whenever you could, rigged the game in your own favour, and then made up stories and rationalisations for why it’s good and right that the people you screwed over should end up serving you.
@ThatBear
Is it possible to name /pol/ as some kind of collective VP?
Aw, where did Dustinzeit’s last comment go? It had such gems:
“All the more reason you’re worth fighting against, then. The only reason you’re even bothering to have discussions and feign rationality is because you want to subjugate men to your whims and you plan to use mens’ own weapons against them. If it weren’t for the law, you’d give in to your urges and destroy things, every woman has a kaiju in her just waiting to break out in civil society.”
GUYS THEY KNOW ABOUT THE KAIJU. SHIT.
Head for the bunker, posthaste and forthwith.
Katz, bring the requiem sharks. We’ll need them.
@IP:
Nominating Milo Yiannopoulos, you mean? I’m sure he would love that. Daddy finally noticed him.