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.
@AW – I think we all have stories like that. Pregnant women are not a monolith.
@brian was that first comment a Shellac reference? I almost busted out laughing at work when I read that.
If they’re forgotten, then who is expecting them to be such gentlemen?
Oh, dear lord, a Donald Drumpf campaign robot called my house. Why? Why why why why?
Pandapool, I feel ya. I recently started getting campaign emails from Ted Cruz. ~shudder~
So… the pinnacle of your mancrimination takes place at a nightclub?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_PLLVhFgJF4/VdMrrpv0ZXI/AAAAAAAATRM/cKxfSA7qbjg/s1600/impressive-very-nice.gif
Vis a vis doors and seats and other polite inconveniences:
The reason you don’t wanna do that stuff, is cos you’re inconsiderate asswipes. It ain’t misadry, fellas. I don’t wanna do it either. Parroting @serendipity on the walking slowly thing. I hate both having doors held for me and holding them myself. But that’s me being, respectively, awkward and discourteous, and not the fault of, broadly, pairs of boobs. Heroic my ass
The correlation between blonde and intelligence is literally not there–it doesn’t act as a cover.
Also, those poor male models probably really don’t appreciate this.
Why aren’t there blonde jokes about men?
Why don’t people grope men on public transport?
Why don’t men have to be househusbands?
Why do men have to vote?
Why are men burdened with the responsibilities of economic and political power?
Please, won’t somebody think about the men?
I open doors and leave a seat because that’s what a considerate person does. I didn’t know I was appropriating discrimination and bigotry.
I have heard plenty of ‘dumb blonde’-esque jokes about men they just tend to revolve more around a guy’s actions than appearance. … shocking.
Holding the door has not once in my life been about gender, I will hold the door for anyone who is near enough to benefit from it. I hate having to run to a door because someone’s holding it for me, so sometimes I won’t hold the door when maybe I should just because I don’t want to force someone that’s on the line of ‘awkward distance’ to feel weird about it.
Why do they assume that the ‘perks’ that many attractive women get apply to all women also? Fat or not conventionally attractive women probably don’t get into a ton of bars for free.
And I don’t really go out to drink but the times that I have, I have never once gotten free cover or a free drink. And frankly I’m glad of that because there really is no such thing as a free drink from a stranger, even if it didn’t cost money.
As far as bus seats, yeah I’m an able bodied woman and if I look like I’m fine standing, please don’t give me your seat, because first off, I don’t need it, and secondly, I don’t really want to sit and bask in the leftover heat from your arse while you glare at me.
Ugh, I’m just so tired of these guys taking everything that sucks in their life and completely misplacing the blame for it.
are we sure this actually isn’t rather clever feminists making fun of the MRA’s in India?
MaggCom pretty much looks like a bogstandard fashion magazine.
I’m thinking someone just “borrowed” their logo to take the piss.
This is the internet, Poe’s law is in full effect.
I’m so lucky to be a woman in a world where females get free entry, free drinks and everyone gives up their seat for me. That sure makes up for struggling to be considered relevant and competent in a job where the male to female ratio is 65% to 35%.
I’m so lucky to be a woman in a world where females get free entry, free drinks and everyone gives up their seats for them. That sure makes up for struggling to be considered relevant and competent in a job where the male to female ratio is 65% to 35%.
Every time the door-holding topic comes up, pretty much everyone ever – man or woman – has responded with something along the line of “I hold the door for everyone; it’s just polite.” At this point I’m pretty convinced that the dudes who complain about holding doors for women are simply inconsiderate assholes who resent the idea of holding the door for anyone and either “give in” to the supposed pressure and quietly seethe about it, or pointedly avoid holding doors and imagine that women are constantly enraged over it.
@Buttercup Q Skullpants: when my son was 3 he had that exact problem, he would grab toys from other kids who were playing, pile them in a corner and guard them. He wanted all the tips and got mad if anyone else had one. We trained him out of this by the time he was 4 of course. So that means that my now 5 year old son is more mature than these dinguses.
@dlouwe
The quality in clothing has dropped because of the push for fast fashion/throwaway mindset. Retail is struggling mightily to just survive – when clothing falls apart faster, shoes wear out sooner, packages contain less product – people need to buy replacements more often. Clothing stores need to stay up with trends and buy from mfgs overseas in the large quantities necessary for a profit. The mfgs are increasingly having to supply goods in shorter time frames, make decisions about materials which cost them more and more to try and keep their own profits from dropping drastically. We Americans want our goods fast, inexpensive, and for some reason think that there won’t be a resulting drop in quality.
Companies have found that they can set a higher price on products packaged and marketed as being specially for women. Even when the only difference is pink packaging and a pink colored item instead of blue. Can I save money by buying the blue packaged razors – yes. The thing is, a company that sells its blue razors for less than the same razors in pink with equally no frills packaging for both colors – employs more men, pays them more for substantially similar work done by their employees who are women, and bank on the perception of consumers that if the product is pink and marketed as specially designed for women there must be differences from the version for men.
Like the commercial for a body wash “designed with keeping lady parts flora in balance in mind” shows all the manly stuff required by the b/f who accidentally uses his g/fs in order to cleanse himself that stops just short of ‘kill it with fire’. Society has many sexist deeply ingrained ideas, but not all are as ridiculous and offensive as the implication that such products are needed because the natural state of a healthy vulva is somehow deficient. It is the human body’s equivalent to a self cleaning oven; special washes and the like are not needed and can actually be the cause of problems with the ‘balance’. When was the last time one saw a commercial for men’s dick, ass, and balls cleanser?
@A Space Alpaca
Exactly! If someone is right there, yes. If they’re far enough away that a door close on your part would not mean a door slam on their part? Just close the door. Or let it close behind you. That’s not rude.
I have been to ladies’ nights, at gay men’s bars in Phoenix (The Connection–which was exclusively male, except one night every year–an MGTOWs paradise, maybe), in the early ’80s. And those were pretty fantastic. Granted, I’m a lesbian and men and women were in different relationships in those spaces. We were all great platonic friends. Men’s clubs had featured artists like Divine and women’s clubs had, nothing as popular. (No big surprise. Business as usual. Women were poor. It was a common fact.)
As far as hetero clubs? When I was young, that sounded like hell so I never went. I got groped enough by gay men wanting to touch boobs.
Boris Johnson, Donald Trump = blonde ambition.
Ladies nights are common here, in straight clubs. But its not so simple. Sometimes its “women don’t pay until 11” . Others, they go fishing in the line for the most, uh, appealing women, and they gain VIPs. Others only let you enter if you are wearing heels, are skinny etc. I heard of girls being blocked because of afro hair. Its horribly racist, fatphobic and misogynistic.
Once you are inside, its hell. You are simply pulled and grabbed, some men insist for 30 minutes, some try several times. The security guards flirt with you. Getting drunk or going alone is very dangerous.
And brazilian guys dare to call that privilege! Only gay clubs are SOMEWHAT safe and fun. But they are also full of straight guys.
Its as they say… If you are not paying for a service, then you are the product.
Oh good, then the guys who made these posters can still get a job.
“Dumb men cant be blonde”, they write in a picture of Jude Law, a blonde man.
I haven’t bought ‘women’s razors’ in a decade.
For one, they’re more expensive for no reason, and besides that, I don’t want their stupid soapy ‘silky’ crap all around my razor. I just want something that works without flopping all over the place or being needlessly huge.
I mean it’s just a piece of metal or 5. Whoever came up with the idea to make ‘different’ versions was both a marketing genius and a gigantic jerk.
I can actually see the difference between male and female razors. Male razors burn the hell out of me. But I don’t see any justification for the much higher price.
One of my Facebook friends shared these saying it was dumb and someone I know (who I unfriended a while back for saying some mens rights stuff) commented “It’s not dumb though…. It’s pretty spot on”. Major cringe. I felt bad for unfriending this person but now I definitely don’t! I’m not sure how to post a picture but there was one saying “When we don’t discriminate against a pussy why do you?” ……”small, big, fat d***”. That one is especially “painful”, according to my unfriended friend. I think we all know why that one is so, so wrong. Is there anything about a woman’s body that hasn’t been discriminated against?