By David Futrelle
Spare a thought, this Valentine’s Day, for the ones who suffer the most during this celebration of love and candy and consumerism — the Men’s Rights Activists, shaken to their very core by a holiday in which women get jewelry and flowers from beleaguered men who want nothing more than some top quality nookie in return but can’t even get a hand job because all women are bitches, or something.
Anyway, they have a lot to say about it.
Yes, that’s right, they’re mad that that a private charity in Toronto is giving Valentine’s day care packages to women and children in domestic violence shelters.
Happily, one creative Men’s Rights Redditor thinks he has a solution to all this misandry: a new government commission tasked with making sure men get their money’s worth out of Valentine’s Day and, indeed, every other day in which they are in relationships with selfish bitch ladies. As TC1827 laments, V-Day
should be gender neutral but has become all about women. Personally, I think there ought to be government commissions to examine relationships to ensure that each party is getting a fair deal. Men are not ATMs, Men and Women need to realize that.
Somehow I don’t see that happening any time soon. But it does sound like a good premise for the world’s worst rom-com.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
I’m 99% sure that what they are proposing would be a significantly more streamlined and efficient model of having a judge listen to the dude’s accounting of the situation (which is guaranteed to be 100% accurate and unbiased, you see), declare all of womankind to be in arrears, and that the repayment required will be exactly what the dude wants all the time from now on.
I did get a couple slices of free pizza at work. Our department sometimes has a small amount of budget leftover money or something, and it’s spent on a staff pizza party in coffee room or something similar. This was the first time it was billed as “Valentine’s day party”.
@Jorge
Oh, I’m hoping he says yes.
If not, it’s still a sweet thing you did.
Seeing as women generally have to do all the leg work on Christmas, Easter (and I presume in the US) Thanksgiving I must say that I am extremely unbothered about this particular gender imbalance.
“Men are not ATMs”
Totally unrelated to Valentine’s Day, but since banking has been mentioned and misogynists are so fond of potraying women as simultaneously inferior, gold-diggers and always glomming off men, i would like to post this just to make some of their heads explode
The new head of the Royal Bank of Scotland is Alison Rose, a feeeeemale
Sigh. Looks like I’m not celebrating Valentine’s day until Sunday.
Thank you so much for this explanation. Just seeing the title of the thread at the top of the screenshot left me very confused. “A bunch of dudes were all able to track down their partners? And none of these shelters screened the mail?”
I could be wrong, but I think this is just a rehashing of the government forced relationships trope that MRAs so love. Women would be forced into relationships with these men, and then would be punished for not fulfilling the appropriate terms.
@Lollipop
Can’t speak for Christmas and Easter because my family has never celebrated those, but in the case of Thanksgiving you presumed correctly. The vast majority of the work was and is done by the women.
If you need a government commission to realize that your relationship is one-sided, maybe you’re not mature enough to…
…oh, I see. This is another one of those “the apparatus of the State should be used to punish women” things, isn’t it?
So how would “relationships” be defined? Would first-time OKCupid daters be required to submit receipts of expenditures and invoices for services rendered?
Who decides the monetary exchange rate for various sexual activities? Would it be a sliding schedule adjusted for age and attractiveness (of both parties, surely)?
Do women get to bill their date for spending money on makeup, hair and shoes if he doesn’t even bother wiping his ass?
Will MGTOWs still think this is a great idea when presented with accumulated hourly wages for cooking, cleaning, and childcare?
And golly, who wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who’s jealously keeping an exact tally of what he gets vs. what you get, and making sure he always comes out ahead? “I paid $36.75 for flowers and tonight’s dinner, so you owe me… (consults tattered nookie schedule) …3/4 of a blow job.” It would be like dating a whiny five year old.
@Buttercup
Now taking bets on whether these men call themselves “small-government” conservatives or libertarians.
What would that even mean? If that means what I think it does, that would be rather unpleasant.
Eh, my mom took me out to a cheap chain restaurant (big entree plus one wine glass each cost under 50$ Canadian, tip included)… Was nice.
(neither of us are in a relationship, her by choice, me by social incompetence).
In any case, considering the fact that, in the Western world (or at least the Anglo-Saxon world), Valentine’s probably developed as it did as a way for men to treat their feminine SOs well for a day (or at least an evening) to make up for the rest of the year’s bullshit, I fail to see the problem (especially as those manbabies want to turn the clock back to before the suffragette movement, when even that token of appreciation would be unneeded due to women back then “knowing their place”).
(Yes I know it also developed as a crass commercialization tactic in the otherwise empty period between the holiday season and Easter)
@Paireon
Bbbut…teh menz! Women sit around all the time eating bon bons, why should hard working men have to give them more bonbons? /s
@Jorge What a lovely gift. We’re all going to need an update on what happened!!
Given that a number of the misogynistic whiners aren’t partnered at all, I imagine the accounting is meant to be in general, not merely in established relationships.
I.e. the dude works and he pays taxes and some of those taxes go into supporting women who haven’t done anything to repay the actions of the taxpaying dude! This is unacceptable and therefore one or more representatives of the women who have benefited from the dude’s largesse must be provided in order to repay him.
Or even that men, in general, have put X amount of money towards things that benefit women, in general, and therefore women, in general, owe this one guy specifically repayment, since he’s part of a class that benefited the women. (Things like housework and childcare and other assorted feminine-coded tasks will of course be exempted from this accounting, since those things aren’t “real work”.)
@Susan
@Universal Kami
I got turned down.
He’s still very fond of me and wants to keep being friends, though. I’m happy that I didn’t weird him out too much by being dramatic.
Oh dear, Jorge – sorry to hear that. I know that’s disappointing.
I love the pottery wheel and lemon tree gifts. I got my step son one for his birthday a few years ago and it has some ‘almost yellow’ lemons on it now.
I sent my ex’s solicitor a long letter on Valentine’s Day – he’s being a dick about custody. I’ve had a really horrible couple of weeks. It’s tripped my regular old anxiety into full on panic attacks. It feels like I’m right back in that old abuse cycle. I’m taking steps though on getting the mental health support I need though.
But my partner has been great, and I got flowers and I made a chocolate cake decorated with a jelly bean heart which we shared with the kids. So that was nice.
I’m sorry, Jorge. You are clearly a lovely, thoughtful person. I am sure he loved the story!
MISANDRY IN ACTION: My boyfriend paid for my supper as well as his yesterday (usually if we’re going out we just pay for ourselves).
It wasn’t a terribly romantic evening because we were tired and it was about -20 outside. He was late because his bus hadn’t come at all. I was at the nearest metro stop and my bus wasn’t there either. So I said why don’t we start walking and meet in the middle. This worked, thankfully -so far so cute – but it was freezing and at the restaurant I accidentally put maple syrup on my salad.
@Jorge – That’s too bad it didn’t work out. It’s nice to have friends that share interests, though – before I met my current bf (also at a creative writing class) I had a crush on someone from another writing group. But it’s still good to have her as a friend.
That reminds me, I had a dream about the “friendzone” once. It was a physical place, a room where the wall space was filled with bookshelves full of books and the floor covered with cushions. No friends included, but still a cozy sort of space. 🙂
@rugbyyogi
A little, yeah. But I still have a great friend. I’ll be sad for a day or so, and then pull myself back together. It’s not like I can never talk to him again, we just won’t be dating like I hoped.
@Susan
He did! He gave me some tips for improving it, and I’m hoping to publish it online soon.
@epitome
It is great to have friends that share your interests, yeah! I’m glad that you still have your friend as well. And that’s absolutely a great friendzone. I especially love the books!
@Epitome
I haven’t done exactly that, but I was once at a brunch and wasn’t paying much attention and accidentally put mayonnaise on a bagel (I thought it was cream cheese, because it wasn’t in a jar and wasn’t labeled). I didn’t eat it. I can imagine some kinds of salad could be good with maple syrup, but I’m not sure about others.
What always annoys me when people talk about the “friendzone” is that it’s always framed as a bad place, or a punishment of some sort. I know it’s disappointing when someone doesn’t date you, and I’ve been there. But at the same time, being friends with someone cool isn’t a bad thing, even if you wanted to date them. I like the vision of it as a cozy space.
Glad to hear y’all can still be friends, Jorge.
The plans Mr. Parasol and I originally made for Valentine’s Day got knocked into a completely different shape, but we’re still here.
@Jorge:
@Naglfar:
Being friendzoned isn’t the opposite of being loved–it’s the opposite of being creepzoned.
re: CSULB:
I’m only peripherally familiar with the Cal State system, I know folx who went to CSPA in the late 70s….
So I’m thing “Cal State…”. and “where the hell is ‘ULB’…?”
😉
@Weird Eddie
California State University Long Beach
This is the second post in a week with “piss” in the title. Is something unusual going on?