On Monday, Martin Luther King Day here in the United States, this was posted in the Men’s Rights subreddit, where, as you can see, it was quite popular with the assembled Men’s Rightsers:
How wrong is this? Let me count the ways.
On Monday, Martin Luther King Day here in the United States, this was posted in the Men’s Rights subreddit, where, as you can see, it was quite popular with the assembled Men’s Rightsers:
How wrong is this? Let me count the ways.
So the Men’s Rights movement has faced some setbacks in the past. The Southern Poverty Law Center profiling them as a movement filled with hate (if not literally a hate group by the SPLC’s strict definition). Events that literally no one showed up to. Paul Elam.
But MRAs have never faced anything quite like this.
Wil Wheaton — yes, that Wil Wheaton, the one who was on Star Trek TNG — has stated publicly that he thinks they’re a bunch of idiots:
https://twitter.com/wilw/status/348291001481310208
Naturally, this tweet has the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit feeling hurt and angry. Well, they always feel hurt and angry, so I guess I mean they feel even more hurt and angry than usual, with a lot of this hurt and anger directed in a Wil-Wheatony direction.
Here are some of their comments. I don’t really have any jokes to make about them because, I mean, just read them. I can’t top this sort of ridiculousness.
Click on the individual comments to see them in context on Reddit. Oh, and note that this comment at the top has MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED UPVOTES.
Wait. What is “hanglowstankin?” Oh, never mind.
Also, I would bet a mint-in-box Wesley Crusher action figure that Wheaton didn’t call you guys “idiots” because he wanted to pander to “pussy” but rather because you are the sorts of guys who routinely refer to women as “pussy.”
But Wil had one defender amongst the Men’s Rightsers:
EDIT: H/T to the AgainstMensRighters for pointing me to this.
This blog gets a lot of drive-by commenters, usually hostile, who drop one comment and then vanish, never to return. A lot of these comments are insults and one-liners, but a good number of these one-shot numbers, apparently seeking to maximize the impact of their one bit of input on this blog, deposit mini-manifestos setting forth their grand visions of what Men’s Rights stands for, why feminism is evil, or whatever it is that has them most riled up that day.
The most recent of these manifesto-droppers was a self-described Man Going His Own Way called Disgruntled, who set forth at some length his own rather punitive version of gender equality. It’s a rather revealing document, so I thought I would share it with you all.
If you live in New York state, you may have seen the poster above plastered on a bus shelter; or you may have seen it posted somewhere on the internet. The message is pretty simple, and it’s sad that it has to be said: kids are pretty impressionable, so teach your sons to treat women with basic respect.
The purpose of the ad campaign, sponsored by the New York state Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, is pretty clear as well: teaching boys respect for women lessens the chances that they will abuse women as adults.
Numerous studies have found that men with sexist attitudes towards women are more likely to try to control their wives or girlfriends with physical abuse. Indeed, one recent study even found that brief exposure to sexist jokes made men more inclined to brush off violence against women, at least amongst men with sexist attitudes to begin with.
Speaking of which, the sexist jokes over at A Voice for Men have unveiled a hilarious new “meme,” which just happens to be inspired by the “awaiting instructions” PSAs we’ve been discussing. And here it is:
The logic here is airtight: because some women get drunk and urinate in public, women don’t deserve respect.
I guess men never get drunk and urinate in public, or ever do anything vaguely embarrassing that gets caught on camera?
Is it really asking too much to respect people as people, foibles and all?
So the nice gentlemen over on MGTOWforums are trying to get to the bottom of what they see as a very important question: Why Can’t They Ever Shut Up?
Unfortunately, they’re not asking this question about their fellow Men Going Their Own Way and their tendency to blather on and on about the manifold evils of women. No, they’re talking about women and their alleged inability to shut up. And they have some, well, interesting theories to share.
NonNegotiable offers these highly scientific thoughts:
Has the Men’s Rights subreddit found its Walter Mitty? Yesterday, a fellow by the name of Mrwhibbley won himself nearly 200 upvotes from the assembled Men’s Rightsers with a tale of terrible misandry at his local Panera Bread.
I am sitting at panera bread. I got here at 6am, when no one was here. After ordering, I took the only comfy chairs next to a nice fire place and started reading. Halfway through my meal two women came up and asked me to move because they wanted to sit where I was sitting.
Ok, but before you say that this didn’t happen, consider this: Only a few minutes ago a woman demanded my seat, and when I didn’t get up to give it to her she simply sat right on top of me. And by woman I mean cat.
So Reddit’s Men’s Rightsers are in a tizzy over a bullshitty piece in the Daily Telegraph warning of an evil worldwide plot to force men to pee sitting down.
The evidence for the existence of such a plot is a bit on the skimpy side — the Telegraph writer leads off with a reference to a 2012 proposal from a County Council member in Sormland, Sweden that doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere legislatively but that’s been a favorite evil-feminist story on conservative websites ever since.
The very notion that some evil feminist might force them to sit while they spray has Men’s Rights Redditors in an unusually combative mood. Heck, it’s got some of the regulars thinking that it might well be time to start doing some good-old fashioned murdering. No, really.
Yep. In case you’ve been wondering, suggesting “a campaign to assassinate feminist figures” because some local council member in Sweden had a dumb idea will in fact win you upvotes on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Strikerfm1, by contrast, seems almost moderate with his “tie feminists down and urinate on them” proposal.
The World’s Greatest 21st Century Human Rights Movement, folks!
Thanks to the AgainstMensRights subreddit for pointing me to this horrible crap.
EDIT: The “let’s murder feminists” comment has been taken down by the subreddit mods, though the user hasn’t been banned for it; the “I want to tie a feminist down and pee on her” comment remains up, and still boasts upvotes.
This has to be my favorite quote to come out of the whole Occidental College fiasco; it’s staggering in its moral blindness and fanaticism and its complete lack of self-awareness. It also captures well the peculiarly self-defeating quality of so much Men’s Rights rhetoric and, er, “activism.”
The backstory here: the commenter in question is none other than John “The Other” Hembling, the Number Two (or Three? I can’t tell) boy at A Voice for Men. He’s responding to an article on Raw Story that’s indicative of the incredibly (and justifiably) bad press Reddit MRAs have gotten for spamming Occiental College’s anonymous rape reporting website with false reports of rape, some of which may have named real people at the school as the “perps.”
At this point in the story, even the normally obtuse Men’s Rights Redditors realize they have a disaster on their hands, and are trying to blame anyone else they can.
But Hembling thinks it’s the perfect time to cheer on the false accusers amongst the MRAs.
That’s right: apparently jealous of all the attention Reddit MRAs have gotten for their cloddish “activism,” he’s decided to jump aboard this train — after it’s left the station, derailed, and fallen into a ravine.
That response is classic, too
Last night, a regular commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit — inspired by a thread on 4chan — posted a link to an online form on r/mensrights under the headline “Feminists at Occidental College created an online form to anonymously report rape/sexual assault. You just fill out a form and the person is called into the office on a rape charge. The “victim” never has to prove anything or reveal their identity.”
This headline is not only inflammatory but untrue: Yes, Occidental College has an online form that allows victims of or witnesses to sexual assault to report the incidents to the school. But, as a statement at the top of the form makes clear, the point is to collect data on how much sexual violence there is at the school, who the victims are, and so on.
If the person reporting the crime names the alleged perpetrator,
a member of the Dean of Students Office will meet with that person to share that the person was named in an anonymous report, review the Sexual Misconduct Policy, and inform the person that if the allegations are true, the behavior needs to cease immediately. Information shared in this form alone will not result in anyone going through the grievance process.
I’ve put the last bit in bold to emphasize a point: No one will be charged with anything based only on information gathered using this form. As would be clear to anyone who thought about the matter for more than a few seconds, it’s rather difficult to investigate, much less prove, a rape if you don’t actually know who the victim is.
Somehow this rather elementary fact eluded the OP, and virtually all of those who left the hundreds of comments on the popular post.
Indeed, a host of Men’s Rights Redditors were so convinced of the innate evil of the online form they all had the same bright idea: let’s flood the school with false reports of rape and break the form. Here are some of their comments. (There are more in the thread.) Note the number of upvotes each of these suggestions got. (Click the images to see the comments in context on Reddit.)
While a few commenters stood up to point out that in fact the school will not charge anyone with anything as a result of anonymous information gathered by the form, they were outnumbered by Men’s Rightsers gleefully reporting that they in fact had reported false information. Among them:
It’s one thing to criticize an anonymous reporting system because of its potential for abuse; this is something else entirely.
The post has been up for 17 hours at this point, with more than 700 net upvotes, and some of the calls for “breaking” the form have been up for nearly as long. The moderators of Men’s Rights have done nothing to stop their subreddit being used to interfere with a school’s attempt to assist rape survivors — including men.
“Breaking” a school’s rape reporting mechanism is apparently a form of Men’s Rights activism.
Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power, published twenty years ago, defined much of the agenda for what’s become the contemporary Men’s Rights movement. If you hear a Men’s Rights activist prattle on about “male disposability”or “death professions” or complain about draft registration (even though the draft itself has been dead for decades), you’ve got Farrell to thank, or blame.
So when Farrell decided to release a new ebook edition of his most famous book, it was perhaps not all that surprising that he decided to turn to the folks at A Voice for Men, probably the most influential Men’s Rights site around, for advice on a picture to use for a new cover.
But what was surprising was the pictures he asked the AVFMers to choose from, three sexually charged, and slightly NSFW, pics highlighting what Farrell evidently sees as the key female challenges to male power: their vaginas, tits and ass.