I don’t know how I missed this bizarre “Manist” propaganda campaign when it happened last summer. Or maybe I did but couldn’t quite believe it was for real? Well, it was. Is.
If, like me, you missed it the first time, #DontMANcriminate was the brainchild of Indian lifestyle/fashion site Maggcom, and it demonstrates that “Manists” in India can be as ridiculously histrionic and oblivious to reality as their counterparts here in the west.
The site launched the campaign on Facebook with an inadvertently hilarious mini MANifesto:
Manism. This is to remind us of the forgotten gender, who, regardless of the situation, are expected to be such gentlemen.
Men: The FORGOTTEN GENDER.
When women talk about being put on the same pedestal as men, simultaneously there is an unsaid expectation of chivalry out of them. It is time we realize that they deserve a break from being all heroic and they too suffer a different level of harassment.
I’m going to bust out crying.
Did I mention that none of the guys whose faces were used in this campaign actually agreed to appear in it?
That first poster above takes on the horrible injustice of dudes not being able to get FREE DRINKS from creepy guys with ulterior motives. This second one takes on the equally serious injustice of men sometimes feeling vaguely obligated to HOLD DOORS OPEN.
And then there is the terrible terrible oppression of women-only cars on trains and buses, which is a thing in India not so much because “hey let’s be mean to men and give women this totally random privilege h ha ha screw those dudes” but because “gosh we really can’t figure out how to stop dudes from groping and harassing women on trains and buses so I dunno maybe just put them in different cars or something?”
And then there’s all that terrible anti-male discrimination in the job market.
And that’s not even counting the terrible prejudice against hostile woman-hating MGTOWs!
But this last one?
Guys, guys! You want to wear heels? You want to wear makeup? JUST GO AHEAD AND DO IT!
Seriously. dudes. You don’t even need to wear underwear!
Actually fellas, maybe you should wear underwear after all. Not everyone can pull off assless pants quite as tastefully as the dear departed Prince.
Yes, FrickleFrackle, normally it’s just hold the door for everyone. But sometimes there’s an “I-Must-Remind-You-That-You-Are-A-Woman” person who pushes you out of the way or refuses to go through a door that you are holding.
I had one the other day at a 4-way stop who refused to budge until I went, even though he had the right of way. My mother failed her first driver’s test in 1966 because one of those dudes.
Re: that first imagee-You’re using an old photo of Johnny Depp. I’m pretty sure he can get free drinks and free entry anywhere he goes. Try again, mememaker.
At work, there was a guy I barely knew who was meters behind me when he called up to me, “I can get that for you,” referring to the door I literally already had my hand on.
“I got it, thanks,” I replied, letting myself through the door.
Unfortunately, there was another set of doors right there. “I can get THAT one for you,” he said, still a good few paces behind me.
My hands were empty. I did not want to stand there and wait for him to catch up so he could show off what a gentleman he was. “Thanks, but I’m good.”
He finally caught up to me on the other side of the doors and told me, “You really need to learn to let guys open the door for you.”
I was gobsmacked. I hate confrontation, but this took the cake enough that I managed to speak up. “No, actually, I don’t.” I was mild about it, but he kind of froze in really uncomfortable silence as I headed off to my meeting.
I had no relationship with this dude at all. His offer of chivalry would have actively inconvenienced me. He didn’t drop it after I politely declined. And then he somehow felt it was appropriate to lecture me, a near-stranger, about why I should be inconvenienced for the sake of dudes everywhere.
This pretty well cemented for me the idea that being on the receiving end of chivalry is not a privilege.
Hello.
No heels ? In France, we even had had a president with heels.
And almost all persons appearing in TV programs have at least a touch of makeup, wihtout discrimination. Same thing for actors at the theater. Even your dear PUA friends have make-up to mask some pimples and the like.
Have a nice day.
I went to a Bible College for a year. You could always tell if a guy was not a student if he did not open a door (when appropriate) for a woman. (I’m a guy.)
And anybody who acted towards a woman (as described by @Kootiepatra) was definitely not a student. If he was, the other guys would have a “chat” with the the dude.
If I can easily do it, I am happy to open a door for a lady. If someone (of any gender) holds the door for me, I thank them and say “Even I need a hand sometimes”. (BTW, I have one hand – and quite willing to take the opportunity for a pun if … umm … handed to me.)
Unfortunately, there are a lot of impolite people in the world, as this blog shows on a daily basis. If the world was made of polite people, David would need to do something else…..
Once a guy on the subway offered me a seat, and when I said no he complained that he just wanted to be chivalrous. I patiently explained to him that my not taking him up on his offer did not make his offer any less chivalrous. Apparently politely refusing is an attack on chivalry or something.
“I don’t get sympathy.”
Excuse me? A young woman in India was so violently gang-raped that she died from her injuries, and several prominent religious leaders said that she should have recited prayers with her rapists. A defense lawyer for the rapists said that if his own daughter went out to a movie with a male friend, he’d set her on fire. http://indiasdaughter.com. India has one of the world’s highest rates of violence against women. Women and girls get abused and raped and murdered every day, are told they can’t go to school while their brothers do, get forced into marriages to older men, or are eliminated while they’re in the womb because women don’t work and dowries are a huge financial burden. And you come bitching for sympathy over not getting free drinks and having to hold doors? Fuck off!
(I’ve never been to India, but my husband was born and raised there. A lot of the stuff he’s told me about his home country makes me shudder.)
Also: in India, men’s rights activists are campaigning to keep marital rape legal, and to make wife-beating legal again. At least they’re honest about “men’s rights” – they don’t want to address issues that men face, they just want the right to oppress women and commit violence against them.