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.
So I was watching a little video roundup of some of the worst video games ever the other day and I came across some footage from a justifiably obscure little first-person-shooter called Operation Matriarchy.
The premise of this 2005 PC game, made in Russia, may as well have emerged from the fevered imagination of some Men’s Rights activist. Here’s how the promo blurb at MobyGames explains it, with the especially MRA-ish bits in bold:
Oh, Reddit! Why must you be so Reddity? As a reminder of how deeply shitty Reddit can be even outside the confines of the Men’s Rights and Red Pill and related subreddits, consider the following comment from AskReddit, in which a RedPiller responded to another comment trying to summarize the “Red Pill Philosophy” for those unfamiliar with it.
Cyralea, a dedicated Red-Pill popper himself, took issue with the notion that Red Pillers are angry. (Gosh, why would anyone think that?) “Some are, certainly,” he wrote. “Particularly former betas who are recovering and are just discovering the nature of the world.”
But, he added,
The philosophy follows that one shouldn’t be any more angry at a women for her behaviours than one gets mad at a dog for chewing things up. We encourage self-improvement and self-respect in light of this newfound information. Some men use the knowledge to pursue sex, but others use it within their relationships/marriages. Alpha behaviours lead to healthier, stronger relationships. The women we date end up more satisfied in the long run, so both parties benefit.
I think it’s easy to get distracted by the angry people in /r/theredpill. There has been a recent influx of subscibers, so there’s been a little more angst than usual. The philosophy absolutely doesn’t hinge on anger though, though the language used may suggest such.
Emphasis added. As of this moment, this comment has a net 7 upvotes, 11 upvotes and 4 downvotes. That’s right: 11 Redditors saw this comment suggesting that women are like dogs who chew up sneakers and thought, “I’d better reward this bit of timeless wisdom! UPVOTE!”
In a followup comment, Cyralea tried to explain why the word “bitch” pops up so frequently on the Red Pill subreddit. Amongst Red Pillers, he noted, “bitches” is
literally interchangeable with “women”. It does not have the negative connotation when used there, again the same way 4Chan uses “fag”. I can understand how this seems aggressive.
Oh, “bitches” is like “fags.” Well then, no problem, use the word all you want, my dear fellow!
The mods removed this followup comment (though it’s still visible in his comment history). Apparently, in AskReddit, explicitly comparing women to female dogs is fine, and will even win you some upvotes, just so long as you don’t actually use a word meaning the same thing.
Thanks to a reader for pointing me to this very Redditty discussion.
I’m pretty sure that feminists aren’t the ones expecting men to pay for dates, so I’m not sure why feminists should be held to account for something they’re not doing, but in any case, the Men’s Rightsers don’t seem much interested in hearing explanations from feminists. No, they’re rather offer their own theories.
Enter a new convert to Men’s Rightsism called MrKocha, who enlists the aid of SCIENCE to offer his own explanation of this terrible date injustice:
What on earth is she talking about? She quotes one of her readers, someone called Just Saying, explaining the peculiar logic behind this assertion in a little more detail:
Feminists lost long ago. Men are in control – at least the ones that understand. We get to call the shots – now instead of being able to keep house, have children, and cook (very, very few women can cook these days) women are ONLY sex-objects. It is the only thing they have to offer to a man, that will get a man’s attention and to hold it for a while. And we don’t have to marry them to get it …
Feminism has brought about all of the things they say they hate – women today only bring sex to the equation. So I have to thank Feminism – I doubt that young women would be as skilled, or as open to oral sex, anal sex, and every other type of sex, without it. And for that, I say, “Thank you Feminism.” If there were a patriarchy, I doubt they could have ever come up with something as beneficial to men. No one would have believed women were that dumb.
The Sunshiny One uses this as a starting point for a bizarre post purporting to show that “feminism has also reduced many women to being childless careerists who must purchase other women’s reproductive capabilities.”
But let’s forget about Mary for now and take a somewhat deeper look at this whole “feminism reduces women to sex objects” argument — which only makes sense if, like Just Saying, you define the worth of women as consisting only of 1) sex and 2) “housewifely duties” like cooking, cleaning, and bearing children.
If you simply ignore all of a woman’s other abilities and accomplishments, and basically her humanity, well, I suppose you could say that the worth of a woman with no interest in cooking, cleaning, or children was “reduced” to sex.
But what a strange way to look at the world, to base your judgement of a person’s worth on a small subset of human interests and abilities and to condemn them if they aren’t enthusiastic experts in these pursuits. You might as well go around dismissing everyone who’s not a proficient accordion player.
The other strange thing about Just Saying’s argument is that it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms; it requires a willful blindness as to how the world works these days. Women make up roughly half the workforce today. Yet babies are still being born and raised. Meals are still getting cooked. Homes are still getting cleaned. It may not always be a wife in a traditional marriage doing all the cooking and cleaning and baby-raising, but couples — and single parents — are making the arrangements they need to in order to get all these things done.
So is the “feminism reduces women to nothing more than sex objects” simply an indication that certain kinds of men — and women — have a hard time recognizing women as full human beings?
Well, to some degree. But I’m pretty sure that even the most backwards thinking misogynists of the manosphere recognize that there’s more to women than cooking, cleaning, baby-making, and sex.
No, I think their attempts to reduce women to these things stem from their own defensiveness over the gains of women — and not just in the workforce, and in politics, and the wider culture.
Consider how Just Saying describes the sex-having women of today. They’re no shrinking violets. They’re not passive receptacles. They’re “skilled … open to oral sex, anal sex, and every other type of sex.”
In other words, they’re women with sexual agency. They’re women who are engaging in sex for their own pleasure, for their own reasons — not simply as a lure to capture a man to marry.
And I think this makes a lot of men deeply uneasy — especially the sorts of men who inhabit the manosphere. That’s why so many of them are so quick to shout “slut” at the very same women they’re so obsessed with pursuing.
That’s why, when they’re lucky enough to find a woman who’s enthusiastically in charge of her own sexuality, they have to pretend to themselves that sex is all she has.
The gentlemen bloggers of the Manosphere — particularly those obsessed with pickup artistry, a.k.a. “game” — like to pretend that they’re part of some sort of reactionary intellectual renaissance. Indeed, some have even convinced themselves that they’re part of a new “dark enlightenment.”
These intellectual pretensions are undercut rather thoroughly by the often puerile content of their blogs, in particular the bloggers’ obsession with cheap insults of the “yeah, well, you’re a fattie who can’t get laid” variety. Indeed, sometimes this seems to be their only real response to their many critics.
Want to earn yourself some quick karma points on Reddit? It’s easy! Just post some terrible misogynistic comic and wait for the inevitable upvotes. Like this one, which combines some standard-issue victim-blaming rape apologism with a bit of racism and serves it all up in terribly drawn cartoon form, and collect dozens of upvotes!
So the Red Pill subreddit, as you may recall, is a place for dudes to discuss the devious and possibly not altogether ethical or even consensual strategies they’ve come up with to … have sex with anyone they want. But their real goal is not just to have sex, but to control other people’s opinions and thoughts of them doing so. They want to silence all critics, and then even demand praise for their morally reprehensible or at least morally questionable actions.
Woah. It feels like my brain was just taken over for a second. Did I even write that? I don’t think I did. I swear I’ve read most of that paragraph before.
Oh wait.
Oh yeah. That’s where it came from. I must have been possessed.
The Red Pill subreddit, where lying to women to get them into bed is perfectly acceptable but a woman having consensual sex is a reprehensible, narcissistic slattern with a gymnastic hamster for a brain.
I think I have a new favorite MRA. Sorry, this one’s an MHRA, because he spends all his time hanging out on A Voice for Human Men. (Oh, it’s still just A Voice for Men? Then Why did they put that H for “Human” in that other acronym?)
Anyway, his name is Victor Zen. And according to Victor’s MHRA Resume — and yes he really does have one — he is quite an awesome MHRA, I mean, just consider these accomplishments:
AVFM Forum Moderator (4/7/2013-7/1/2013)
Enforced AVFM policy in the AVFM forums
Maintained unity in MHRA community
Encouraged peaceful online activism
I mean, it totally sounds like he was one kickass AVFM policy-enforcing, MHRA-unity-maintaining, peaceful online activism encouraging moderator for nearly three months!
If I were hiring any MHRAs, I would definitely put Victor Zen’s MHResume (see what I did there) at the top of the virtual pile.
Oh, but that’s not all! Since then, Victor has been doing a bang-up job as AVFM Backup System Administrator, which I assume means he system administrates the hell out of AVFM whenever it backs itself into a corner, which it sort of does pretty much all of the time. (I think. I’m not really up on these sorts of technical things.)
But that’s not the part of Victor’s MHResume I want to celebrate today. For if you scroll down to the bottom you will find a list of his real accomplishments:
First day as MHRA: December 5th, 2012
Posters designed: 8
Videos produced: 38
Cartoons drawn: 18
Articles written: 27
YT Subscribers: 120+
Woah, woah, what’s that about cartoons?
That’s right, he drew EIGHTEEN MOTHERFUCKING CARTOONS. Not eight. Not eighty. EIGHTEEN.
That cartoon at the top of this post. That’s just a taste of just ONE of these EIGHTEEN cartoons.
You can can see the loving craftmanship — sorry, craftsMANship — he brings to the task.
Let’s take a look at the rest of them, which have been helpfully posted for us in a bunch of AVFM forum threads and on his own site. Be prepared for some violence and maybe a teensy bit of hate, because the TRUTH IS NOT PRETTY. Also, neither is his terrible drawing style.
Also, one of the cartoons features a talking vagina.
Here you can see the ironic conclusion to the story started in the two frames above, as well as an assortment of other cartoons posted under the heading Victor.Zen On Absurdity via Inequality.
Victor has posted some of his favorites on his own site as well. (He starts with the vagina one; apparently he’s quite proud of his passing familiarity with that sexual organ.)
As well as an explanation for why the word “mangina” is totally not misogynistic, just like a simple descriptive term with no misogynistic overtones that means a dude who’s, you know, a “philogynic misandrist.”
A couple of days ago, Rachel Swirsky — an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who posts at Alas, A Blog and sometimes comments here on Man Boobz as well — sent along a link to a brilliant, brutal, and horrifying short story she’d recently published in Apex Magazine. Titled “Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings,” the story is essentially her attempt to get inside the mind of a violent misogynist.
As the editor’s note to her story explains:
Swirsky wrote this piece after talking to multiple editors who worked with horror stories, all of whom reported receiving many submissions about men murdering their wives or ex–wives. Despite the fictional veneer and supernatural justification [for the murder], many have the feel of personal revenge fantasies, and most characterize the women through disturbing, misogynist stereotypes. Swirsky wanted to see if it was possible to write a story that included all the markers of the trope but nevertheless subverted it.
In writing the story, Swirsky told me, “I drew heavily on Manboobz for mood and imagery, to try to get the sense of the narrator.”
So, enjoy. But first, I should warn you that the story is very violent, very disturbing, and could very well be triggering. So giant TRIGGER WARNING.
