One possibly true story about the Talking Heads is that, while working with Brian Eno on their genre-shattering album Remain in Light, the band members, or perhaps Eno, decided they wanted to do a song that sounded like Joy Division. The only problem was that none of them had heard Joy Division before, and apparently (this part of the story makes no sense) couldn’t track down any of their recordings.
So instead of recording a song modeled on Joy Division’s distinctive sound, Eno instead suggested that they do a song based only on the descriptions of the band’s music in the British music press.
The resulting song, “The Overload,” offering a glum coda to an album best remembered for its more exuberant moments, doesn’t really sound anything like Joy Division. But it does sound exactly like a song based on, well, what people were saying at the time about Joy Division.
I think about this story a lot, and I really want it to be true — a reflection of Eno’s genius as a producer who knows that sometimes setting constraints on creativity can force musicians and other artists to ratchet up their own creativity.
It’s also a reminder of what happens when you base your understanding of music, art, whatever, not on direct contact with the art in question but on other people’s vague feelings and ideas about it.
In the case of The Overload, the song stands on its own, in large part because David Byrne and Brian Eno and the rest were able to conjure up something interesting based on the vague adjectives applied to Joy Division in the press; they weren’t trying to represent Joy Division’s actual aesthetic. It was more of a game of telephone.
Why am I going on about this? Well, because every time I stop by the Men’s Rights subreddit, or any site that involves large numbers of ignorant people avidly discussing the alleged evils of feminism, I see something similar going on.
It’s clear from the comments that virtually none of the commenters have ever actually read a book or even a handful of articles about feminism. Unfortunately, they’re getting their information from somewhere even less reliable than the music press; they’re largely just repeating what they’ve heard about feminism from other people as ignorant on the subject as they are. It’s a game of telephone that’s lost almost all touch with reality.
Here are a few comments taken from recent discussions of feminism on the Men’s Rights subreddit — or, rather, discussions of a not-terribly-accurate facsimile of feminism the Men’s Rightsers have made up, basically to make themselves and each other mad. When your movement, such as it is, is driven largely by hate, you gotta remember to keep stoking the hate.
One recent comment:
[F]eminists are the aggressors who started the gender war; and … feminism is not seeking the goal of equality at all.
There are lots more comments just like that one:
Even when they get equality, they’ll still bitch about not having equality. In the end they’ll find something to bitch about, they always do.
One more:
As I get older I realized feminism is a scam. It is a great injustice against men. I don’t even understand how it’s legal. It’s not fair at all.
Apparently feminism is some sort of big lurking monster intend on murdering men, or something.
Or maybe just a cult. A death cult.
I’m done playing nice.
Feminism is a cult of hatred and death and anyone who still claims to be one should be mocked and jeered at
Having been pegged (accurately) as members of a hate movement, some MRAs try to reverse the charges:
What they want is more dominance and privilege at our expense.
Feminism is a fraud and a hate movement and you need to stop giving in to their frame of reference.
Longtime Men’s Rights eccentric DavidByron2 has a delusionary class analysis of feminism:
The 1% support feminism for much the same reason they support Nazism or racism. At some point though these things become too much of a risk to continue to be associated with so they may move on to supporting other ways to divide the working class.
Here’s another popular MRA fantasy: that feminism can be defeated with a sort of reverse-Lysistrata move.
The only way feminism will be defeated is if we truly treat women as equals. What I mean by that is, we treat them like we treat males. So no sex, no marriage and no children. Just pretend they are males.
Once enough of them are childless and in depression, they will begin to wake up. If we keep on allowing them to practice hypergamy, to get the upper-hand for no reason in society AND STILL give them children and commitment, they will not change.
Luckily for us, there are heaps of them in their 30s and 40s that are now alone and due to their biology will never be able to find a proper partner to commit to them unless they aim really low or an exception to the rule is found (she is extremely attractive etc).
This fellow below, while as delusional as the commenters above, has a rosier view of the future:
the current generation of feminists are just pushing for supremacy, and lost their chance. possibly the credibility for the entire movement, that had since then done some remarkable stuff, like voting rights, rights to own property, equal rights in marriage, etc
I’m hoping that once this generation of karens dies, in the next 100 or so years feminism and mra migth do as they’re supposed, and go hand in hand creating equality and fairness for both, instead of competition and political tension where both mock each other and refuse to understand the other side
Nah. That’s all on you guys. You’re the ones that have taken leave from reality.
That does give feminists one advantage in the current ongoing battle with MRAs: We pay attention to what MRAs really say instead of just repeating endless dire nonsense that we and our colleagues have made up about Men’s Rights. In other words, we know what we’re up against. The MRAs have no clue.
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@Kat, the shooter sounds desperately insecure. Like he constructed an extreme ideal of masculinity which he was afraid he couldn’t live up to, and tried to hide that through public chest-beating.
I’ve discovered another eerie commonality with that Canadian shooter: the Denver one impersonated a police officer to enter premises at least once during his rampage.
@ kat & moggie
A friend sent me this article on the shooter.
https://www.wonkette.com/denver-spree-killer-was-super-manly-wingnut-who-thought-the-weak-need-a-good-beatdown
I must confess, had I just read his posts not knowing the context of his horrific crimes, I would have assumed they were the fantasies of some 15 year old wannabe edgelord.
Sorry to hear about the shooting. Just read the Wonkette article (thanks, Alan, for the link).
The writer quoted him bragging about being “aggro”, having high testosterone and a quick temper. Some thoughts on this…
1) I get angry easily too. The harder and braver thing is practicing self-control when anger could lead to doing/saying harmful things.
2) You can have a bad temper without high testosterone.
3) He was probably the sort of person to sneer at others for being “easily triggered” without realizing the irony.
@Snowberry: Excellent news. Turns out being a pimp of underage girls is illegal, who knew?
Meanwhile, I reiterate that the “fee-males” who want kids will be much happier to marry or just get knocked up by Chads, or sperm banks. Those who don’t want kids (moi) will be happier with less pressure on them to have them. And the gay men won’t care one way or another, they’ll adopt the abandoned children of the MRAs, work out some arrangement with lesbians or surrogates, or just carry on being delightfully gay without kids.
Everyone of every sex/gender/orientation will be happy to be ignored by MRAs. Now if we could just keep them from getting guns. Yay to the woman cop who’s survived a misogynistic job and took down this murderer. I hope, before he died, he realized it was a fee-male who got him.
Weird Mike attempts to make the Denver mass shooting about himself:
Scary: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/17/how-civil-wars-start-barbara-walter-research/
We’ve lost Betty White. 🙁
@VP: Dammit. Just a swell capper to the week.
Greetings from the future!!! (If you live west of me)
It’s 2022 here now. So far, it’s going pretty well!
@Victorious Parasol:
Who?
@Surplus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_White
@ surplus
Literally the best thing since sliced bread.
Betty White’s death surprised me simply because she was in the news recently and nothing was said of health problems. That’s too bad. She almost made it into 2022 and hit her hundredth birthday.
@ GSS ex-noob
From the news articles about the shooter, his picture, etc, I get the impression the cop who confronted him wasn’t even looking for him. Call it distasteful, but I kind of like that idea. Mr. Alpha Manly Man, two hundred pounds of muscle, wearing tactical gear and carrying a rifle that presumably could penetrate soft body armor like it’s a sweatshirt, gets blown away by a hundred and twenty pound woman with a little pistol.
On that note, I find it interesting how these kinds of guys long so much for a more primitive society they most likely wouldn’t last long in. They imagine they’d be the cult leader out of Mad Max Fury Road, but in all likelihood if SHTF and they took it as their chance to start assembling a harem and killing everyone they didn’t like, they would get voted off the island, killed by one or more upset parties, meet with an “accident”, etc.
Bullets and blades, as McLeod finally realized, don’t really care how Alpha their target is. Nor, for that matter, do they care whether they enter the body from the front or back, or are joined by a half a dozen of their friends.
Really, these guys should look at modern and historical tribal cultures, where the strong held sway or whatever. Whether it is a modern South Pacific tribe or a Celtic one B.C., the guys who end up in power rarely did so on a pile of bodies. They did so through diplomacy and a little concept called largesse. Becoming the “Big Man” is usually done by making friends foremost. Killing enemies is more of an afterthought or removal of obstacles.
(Seriously, look up the ways the Celtic chieftains rewarded their followers and threw expensive parties. It occurred to me that the recent thing in the news about that US restaurant owner who pays for her employees to take vacations every year would have made sense to them, though they might suggest adding some monthly bashes with plenty of alcohol to round things out.)
@.45:
They all imagine they’d be a cult leader or warlord. A handful would be. A few thousand more would be some warlord’s mooks. All the rest would be random crowd-scene extras.
Or to put it in old-school video-game terms, for every one who was the head of the centipede there’d be a bunch who were just body segments and the vast majority would be those helpless mushrooms just waiting to get mowed down by stray shots.
Things have changed less than you may think. The present-day ruling class also throw huge expensive parties and make big public shows of signing SUV-sized checks made out in obscenely large numbers to miscellaneous charitable causes.
@Americans in general:
WTF is going on with your medical system? I knew it was for-profit, but I just put an American channel on to watch the ball drop in a few minutes and the very first ad that came up was some celebrity endorsement for … a particular brand of COVID-19 test kit.
And all those hospitals with religious references in their names. Why would these seem trustworthy? How will people who don’t believe in evolution decide to treat an antibiotic-resistant staph infection? If they stick to their beliefs come hell or high water, won’t they say “well, they can’t have evolved resistance, since God’s creatures have been fixed and immutable for six thousand years and didn’t exist at all before that, so we just need to up the dosage of penicillin and it must eventually work…”
And I don’t even want to think about how devoutly religious doctors and nurses might (mis)treat women with conditions that involve their reproductive organs … let alone trans patients wanting hormones or reassignment surgery, etc.
The sort of dudebros who regard Immortan Joe as a role model tend to forget that he was hiding critical illness under his predatory mask, deserted by his harem, and assassinated by one of his guards—a disabled woman at that.
@ Surplus to Requirements
I can’t find the book I was thinking of concerning Celts, and a quick internet search doesn’t come up with anything, but I seem to recall chieftains were literally giving back to their community something like 90+% of their acquired wealth. Somehow I think modern day “royalty” with millions and even billions of dollars sunk into multiple mansions they rarely set foot in aren’t matching that level of largesse. Could be totally wrong about this, it has been a few years since I read the book.
As for our illustrious US medical system… it’s a known problem. For your average Liberal anyway. Not so much for Conservatives, but then anything that the Liberals go on about is something they have to be against as per the party line.
@ Full Metal Ox
The thing is, even Immortan Joe gave his followers and troops some form of largesse, he was not some asshole who talked about how Alpha he was for getting in petty street fights and how much of a angry jerk he was. He got to where he was by effectively organizing a motorcycle gang and conducting a small war, whereas a lot of these active shooter types usually don’t seem to even have any friends or the ability to plan out their rampages very well.
Again, we are back to the part where I find it difficult to believe if society fell into some kind of anarchy where these guys could act out their fantasies without law enforcement getting involved, that they would be on top, at least for very long. Remember, even the biggest baddest UFC stars have bodyguards to make sure someone doesn’t sucker punch them or jump them from behind. I don’t care how big you are, put someone behind you with a kitchen knife or brick, a valid reason to use it, and you best have a clear line of succession in your little empire. You can’t live out your little fantasies without people around to tell you what a badass you are, and you can’t account for every weapon around, so you simply can’t expect to be able to push everyone around without an ounce of social skills. It will bite back on you.
But, like I said, these guys often seem to lack even a group of friends they can trust. Somehow they think a total willingness to kill at the drop of a hat will make people worship them.
To be honest, it is the far right intellectuals that are scarier in such a scenario, because they know how to be charming, they know how to work the system. It is more believable that they could end up being a cult leader and guys like McLeod their rabid attack dogs. (You, know, if they behave themselves and avoid upsetting the ex military types that would logically be the cult’s backbone. Step on too many toes, make yourself more trouble than you’re worth, and I imagine they’ll… find someone else to do your job.)
@.45 It’s true that the truly scary types are the ones that actually “lead” by making these dudes think they’re leaders. Although I think the guys that end up “snapping” are kind of outliers in that system. They guzzle up the words and parrot them but are too volatile even for hate groups so they hang around somewhere on the fringes but neither make it into the ranks, building alliances nor manage to built their own “following”. Personally I’m also really creeped by the “quiet” followers that manage to live a somewhat normal live while ingesting their idols hate. Esp. considering how easily millions of people are reachable through media.
That said I feel like these kind of loudmouths generally idealize a world ruled by mobs. But that kind of thing isn’t sustainable. We couldn’t have built civilizations that way. If anything societies have always directed the violence of unfit men towards other societies – and they enriched themselves through it, sure. But they weren’t built on internal vioence.
Although I will admit that apparently there seems to be some sort appeal to that kind of lifestyle esp. for young men. We never went into detail on that phenomenon when I was in university but there were (are?) several cultures and societies where young people (often but not always just men) go through a liminal phase when they were sometimes serparated by society up to several years and band together in groups. But then they grow up and rejoin society.
Maybe that’s what these dudebro’s are missing. Maybe they’ve been coddled by civilisation’s amenities too much and could really have used being left alone in the middle of the woods with a bunch of other hormonal boys when they where between 14 and 18.
What’s ironic to me is: These guys think that their violence being called out is an unacceptable affront by “weak” people, when in reality men get such leeway to be violent towards people, esp. those closest to them even to this day. That’s a pretty dark aspect of privilege and they literally wanna extend that “privilige” from their home to the streets.
In reality though society has always punished such violence. People going around openly killing people within their own group are an intolerable disruption and put stress on the whole group so they were snuffed and forgotten by history.
@Alan
More properly, sliced bread is the best thing since Betty White, as she predates bread slicing machines
@ dali
Argh! That’s the point I was trying to make.
Ah well, if there’s anything in the Big Crunch hypothesis, then in about 200 billion years time my comment will be correct. I like to take the long view.
@.45: I have read extensively on the Celtic tribes, and you’re right. I’m also reminded of the Pacific Northwest peoples’ potlatch ceremonies, where giving everything away showed how powerful a chief was.
I hope you’re right that he never saw the lady cop coming. Ultimate irony and karma. But I hope he saw her as he was dying. She’s probably such a good shot he didn’t have time to think, though.
I’ll think about Betty next time I have a slice of bread.
Wow, even MTV (!) is putting up a 15 second memoriam to Betty during ad breaks.
Truly universal, she was.
@ GSS ex-noob
Oh, my impression of it was that the shooter certainly knew what he was facing, he did shoot her after all. If we really want to fantasize about it, I’d like to think he panicked when he realized his latest target had the means to fight back, lost his nerve, fired randomly while backpedaling, then got shot by the oh so weak female.
(The reports I saw said the cop fired from the floor after being shot, which implies he had the initiative, but screwed it up despite having the drop on her with a rifle. Guess it is more fun when your targets lack the means to fight back. Must be one of them brave Alpha Male things.)
I hope you DO realize how many feminist articles I’ve read, correct? And from my experience feminists are less likely to read MRA stuff or engage in the first place. Or just to actually understand us, and not misrepresent us. God, I can’t wait to react to this article on my site.
@Surplus to Requirements
*Sigh*
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
I was thinking more along the lines of this….
Apparently we think of very different things.
I will admit that there are MRAs like this, and it messes with me when they’re this way, because they’re perpetrating the same misandry that the rest of us MRAs are trying to end. Attacking men and degrading them is not what we should be doing. However, many of us are good and not misandristic (or misogynistic) and fight for all men. Another thing I’ve noticed? The misogynistic ones will often shame men to try to get them to leave women or hate them too. They’re just hateful all over the board.
I don’t think the rest of us ignores science though…
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
A mass shooting by a Nazi MRA? I have to check this out, cause it could be 1 of 4 things: 1. It’s actually a Nazi MRA. 2. It’s an ex-MRA, like Roy Den Hollander was. 3. It’s not even an MRA. 4. Something else.
@Jazzlet
At least it was approved this time.
@Seth S
I have no idea who this is.
“…alt-right”? Oh, makes sense. The alt-right MRAs are always extreme. I just try to stay away from them.
Does seem like something an alt-right MRA does. I’ve seen a couple of them before.
I wonder if he was an actual MRA? I’ll check it out, of course, but I’m curious to that. People also claimed that Elliot Rodger was an MRA too and it’s obvious he wasn’t. Roy Den Hollander was also is-identified; he was an ex-MRA who hated MRAs and thought that we were essentially a bunch of babies who act like girls or something, or are simps? I can’t remember. It’s been a while. If he turns out to be one, then I’ll condemn him and write an article about him on my site.
Why does it matter if they’re AFAB? If they’re nonbinary or trans men wouldn’t that be misgendering to put them to that? It would be violence against nonbinary and/or trans men, not AFAB.
Alt right (not all right wing MRAs are like this) MRAs are extreme and I tend to keep away from them since they’re, you know, extreme. I never liked them much.
@rusalka
Yeah, there’s certainly some MRAs who do that. I’m not one, and neither are my MRA friends or pro-MRA friends or men’s advocate friends (like my lesbian men’s advocate friend in Spain! She’s pretty great, though feminists have told her she’s not a woman or lesbian because she’s a men’s advocate, which sucks big time because she is indeed a lesbian).
Hate to break it to you Chief, but we’ve existed since at least 1856 and we are already growing and getting a hold in society…though the hold is much newer, as we’ve only begun to get people on our side in large numbers, more recently.
@epitome of incomrepehensibility
That’s a very good point. I’m gay myself.
Some MRAs do that. Not all, or even most, but it is a sizeable chunk. They generally also tend to shame men to get them to be misogynistic, as well, from what I’ve seen.
@sunnysombrera
Yeah, I’ve seen that faction, I tend to stay away, and generally for good reason. It’s also partly because said white supremacists are afraid trans men (white trans men I should correct) will transition and not have kids because…logic. We’re all totally attracted to only women (even though I’m gay), and we totally don’t want kids (even though I love kids and am possibly pregnant, on accident, though this would probably be a bad time considering the fact that I’m 17, almost 18, so yeah teen pregnancy. Not fun.). But yeah, I’m a bit wary of them. None of my MRA or pro-MRA or men’s advocate friends are like this, and I’m glad.
@GSS ex-noob
Very excellent news.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t know.
Ok.
Ok, this is offensive. If I AM pregnant, I’m not gonna abandon my child, and I certainly won’t abort it, either. I’ll raise it. Only alone because the dude dipped on me (which is bad for the child) (which also doesn’t happen in the majority of cases, men usually stay or want to stay, the dude just didn’t like me anymore). But I’ll still raise it. And while I may prefer a boy, I will be fine with whatever. (Boy=Prometheus, Girl=Celestial, Intersex=Viktor.) I’m really offended that you think we just abandon our kids. Plenty of us have children. Not really usually the younger ones, but many of us still do.
Please don’t do that again.
Ok.
Uh, tell that to me (FtM, gay/male attracted), my lesbian friend in Spain, my gay friend in the UK, my bisexual male friend in India (I can’t tell you who he is since he may get kicked out by his parents or attacked by someone else if they find out he’s bisexual), Blaire White, Theryn Meyer, Phillip Tanzer, the LGBT Intactivist group, plenty of the mods and people on the Men’s Rights Discord (including over 10 nonbinary, if I’m correct?), the one trans male meninist on Instagram I know of but can’t remember the tag at the moment (it went something like trxnnsmenist or something like that, but I’m not sure), the multitude of trans men and women MRAs I’ve met or come across, all the gay and lesbian MRAs, the bisexual MRAs, etc. Need I continue?
An Introduction to the Men’s Rights Movement. – A Voice for Men
Um, ok. Confused about this one.
I hope so too.
@rusalka
If you’re including MRAs in that, then I hope you know that I was even one when I was a little girl and I am still one, and no I wasn’t raised that way…I just became one by developing empathy for men and male issues. Such as domestic violence and rape (by both genders and genders beyond against everyone).