So our dear friend Fidelbogen, self-declared Counter-Feminist Agent of Change and the wannabe philosopher-king of the Men’s Rights movement, has written an exceedingly dull and verbose post for A Voice for Men rehashing the whole Agent-Orange-RadFemHub-thing. Now, it’s a lovely, slightly too-hot Sunday afternoon here at Man Boobz headquarters, so naturally I didn’t do much more than lightly skim the whole thing. But I did notice this interesting little “argument” part way through.
Apparently Fidelbogen has concluded that it’s perfectly fine for critics of feminism to completely ignore the ideas of most feminists and focus only on the dogmas of the most radical of RadFems:
We should lay to rest the silly notion that such feminists as these are only “fringe radicals” or “extremists”, and that we mustn’t judge the entire movement by them. My question is, why shouldn’t we judge the entire movement by them? Compared to them, what do the moderate feminists really add up to? Anything much? What does a heap of feathers amount to, compared to a cannon ball? What really fuels feminism, anyway? Is it driven relentlessly forward by mellowness and grooviness — by fun, fluffy, happy feelings? Or does it run, let us say, on pure hate, pure spite, pure malevolence, pure malignancy? Well, you get the idea: darker emotions?
That weird choice of alternatives at the end is pretty much a textbook example of a “false dichotomy.” You would think that someone with a brain as big as Fidelbogen’s would be able to recognize and avoid such an elementary logical fallacy.
Fidelbogen continues:
Say what you will, but I am partial to the old maxim that happy people don’t make history. And which is more, I’ve got some experience with feminists; I have studied them, as chaps like me will do, and I have logged a few years in this trade. And I can attest that feminists are all alike. Monolithic, you might say. They vary in superficialities, but under all those sheathing layers lies the high-conductive cable core on which the feminist message travels. It is the same message every time. Every feminist I have ever personally encountered, or been informed of, differs from the radfems we are now studying only in the strength of the underlying signal. One way or another, let them veil it ever so artfully, the message never skips a beat: “Men are the problem. . . men are the problem . . . men are the problem.”
Watch out for the Misandry Bears and their giant Misandry Teeth.
You may recall a post I did the other day about Roger Ebert’s recent claim that women are superior to men. You may also recall that my basic thesis was that Ebert was completely wrong. Heck, you didn’t even have to read my post to see what my stance was; I made it clear in the title itself, which started off with the words “no, women aren’t better than men.”
Well, apparently my saying explicitly that women are not superior to men, and approvingly quoting another feminist saying the same thing, was too much to handle for the proprietor of an exciting new blog chronicling how wrong and bad I and my commetariat are. Mikhael Varpole of the imaginatively named Anti-Man Boobz blog (motto: “Exposing Man Boobz as a vile hate cult”) wrote about Ebert’s claim, and my response, in a recent post.
Here’s what he wrote:
Naturally, Futrelle and the boob gallery had to get in on the action. To his credit, Futrelle doesn’t condone Ebert’s misandry- but then again Dave’s always been a sneaky one that way. He won’t stand in solidarity with Ebert- but note that he’s happy to spin an instance of bold-faced misandry into an opportunity to bash MRAs who are righteously angry, ultimately concluding:
Guys, I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re sort of making it look like Ebert might have a point.
Remember what I said about subtle bigotry? This is a prime example. Misandry and misandric attitudes are dismissed in our culture because the concept itself is seen as illegitimate. And by portraying AVfM’s righteous anger as childish and “proving Ebert’s point”, Futrelle is knowingly and consciously destroying the legitimacy of misandry as a concept. It’s psychological manipulation on a global scale, and it’s downright sinister. And Futrelle, along with his lickspittle toadies, are happily contributing to the anti-male conspiracy.
Yes, explicitly stating that women aren’t superior to men is an exceedingly subtle form of misandry indeed.
Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten what the allegedly “righteous” anger of the AVFM crowd looks like, here’s are a couple of excerpts from the angry screeds I quoted from in my post:
Feminism has provided today’s pampered princesses with the privilege-stuffed, consequence-free Nirvana that they believe they’re entitled to. Do you really think they can be swayed with reason and logic?
And:
[E]verything on this earth from the knickers these women wear on their fat buts, all the way through to just about every single thing they touch in their day, up to and including homes, buildings, cars, trains, rockets, and the food they stuff down their throats, has all been either invented or produced by those useless ‘less than’ human, men.
That doesn’t sound so much like “subtle bigotry” as “just straight-up bigotry.” This is anger of an exceedingly un-righteous kind.
Well, after receiving some gentle mockery at the hands of the Man Boobz commetariat – sorry, at the hands of my “lickspittle toadies” – Varpole posted a comment here trying to clarify his stance.
I disdain commenting here for obvious reasons, but I have to clarify that subtle or “benign” misandry can be as damaging as overt bigotry- moreso, even, because it’s harder to call out. Radfem-level misandry can usually be dismissed (usually). But less overt displays of male-hatred are very difficult, because the concept has no veracity in a misandric, male-hating, anti-man culture. A culture, by the way, that MEN set up, and MEN continue to run, at both the low and high levels.
Well, this is an interesting thesis. Men – sorry, MEN – created the world as we know it, and run things – and yet have decided to set up a culture that is “male-hating [and] anti-man.” How would that even work?
After several commenters – sorry, toadies – asked him to explain this mysterious paradox, Varpole posted a clarification of his clarification on his blog.
First, I admit that “men maintain the culture” is an oversimplification. Obviously, that’s not true- certainly not today, arguably not ever. There are women police officers, women in government, women farmers, women firefighters, etc. Women do contribute to the maintenance of civilization. Not as much as men, but nonetheless.
On the other hand, women, feminists, and their assorted mangina lackeys have a disproportionate influence in the media and pop culture. Feminists and their dogs control the messages beamed at us through music, video games, and Hollywood. They have the print news media. They control primary education (how many teachers are men?) and thus the shaping of our youth. The infamous SOPA was almost certainly backed by feminists, in an attempt to bring the Internet (not coincidentally, the primary holdout of MRAs) under their control. Even when it is a male hand holding the pen, a male voice speaking into the mic, they are generally manginas who kowtow to female demands (see: Roger Ebert; Bill Clinton; H.L. Mencken). Thus, they are mouthpieces for the misandrist NWO, and are not in any way representative of men as a class; it’s just a different mechanism for the female perspective. …
I’m not saying thy’re calling for mass castration or anything like that (such a move would be too obvious). But there is a systematic denigration of men and masculinity in the media, and a subtle promotion of a misandrist, feminist, female supremacist ideology. In the news, in television, movies, literature, comic strips- we see the epidemic with our own eyes.
Huh. MEN created and still run the world, but “women, feminists, and their assorted mangina lackeys” dominate the media and popular culture with their evil anti-man agenda? There’s no getting around it: Varpole seems to be suggesting that MEN are just terrible at running the world.
Wouldn’t such an argument be … misandry?
Not even subtle misandry, at that.
I look forward to more blatant misandry from Anti-Man Boobz in the future.
As well as some critiques of his misandry from a mysterious, even newer blog that sprung up the other day: Anti-Anti-Manboobz, devoted to debunking Anti-Man Boobz and being meta as fuck.
Arthur Goldwag, the author of the SPLC’s recent report on hatred in the Men’s Rights movement, has now responded to some of the hysteria his article provoked amongst MRAs. As Goldwag notes, contrary to what most MRAs seemed to conclude from the report,
the SPLC did not label MRAs as members of a hate movement; nor did our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites – false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like – are all without merit. But we didcall out specific examples of misogyny and the threat, overt or implicit, of violence.
Thomas James Ball, for example, who was hailed as a martyr on so many men’s rights forums, called for arson attacks on courthouses and police stations. The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik wrote extensively about the evils of feminism. We included as much as we did about Register-Her.com because it is so intimidating to its targets, not all of whom are criminals. When Elam accused Vliet Tiptree, a pseudonymous contributor to RadFem Hub, of “calling for extermination of half the human race; the male half, that is,” he offered a cash reward for her real identity. The names and locations of several candidates were publically aired.
Goldwag also takes a look at some of the radical feminists that have become boogeywomen for so many MRAs, and deals with other MRA complaints.
Obviously Elam and other MRAs will respond to Goldwag’s latest as well. Post links in the comments below as you find them, and I’ll add them to this post.
EDITED TO ADD: And, right on schedule, AVfM responds to Goldwag’s response. It’s a John the Other post, so be prepared to read a lot of words saying not very much.
For a bunch of guys who love to pretend they don’t care about women, Men Going Their Own Way certainly do love to talk about them. So much so that I’m thinking they may need to update their little acronym to MGTOAW: Men Going Tediously On About Women.
Over on MGTOWforums.com, for example, the regulars are having their tenth billion discussion about how women totally get all ugly as they get older, while men get handsomer and more awesome. Gannicus, himself 40 years YOUNG, starts things off with this:
To me, one of the most obvious things a man should notice is that in the US, most American women have fallen apart or completely without value by 40.
Is it just me, or does that “in the US, most American women” bit remind you of Miss South Carolina and her “US Americans?”
I know some will say it happens earlier, but lets just stick with a round number. And lets forget about virtue, loyalty, honesty, etc for a moment, which we know is not exactly known to be a top export of American women. Just being completely shallow and superficial, based on appearance alone, I find it disgusting and repulsive to view virtually any woman at 40. I just turned 40 and I am proud of my appearance. I expect to continue taking care of my body,etc.
However, I feel that based on looks. weight, hair, facial quality, etc. that 1% or less of Amercian women at 40 are, shall we say,bangable or even tolerable if you had to stare at for 10 minutes. And lets not even mention that wretched term from a bygone era called feminity. That is almost unheard of in the US in any age group. …
Which then leads me to wonder what the hell do young guys think their female partners will look like at 40? I mean, do they think THEIR girl will be different?
I’m just throwing this out as a hypothesis here, but I’m guessing that “most young guys” aren’t angry, bitter, woman-hating assholes who think all women over 40 are hideous hagbeasts.
Back on MGTOWforums.com, Downandout repectfully disagrees with Gannicus thesis. He believes that many women get ugly long before they hit 40.
It’s not so much that American women hit 40, it’s that 40 hits American women. Hard.
Jokes aside, I don’t think you can peg it to one number. A lot of skanks are starting to look awful in their 20s. Take Lindsay Lohan for example. Girls are starting to drink, do drugs, eat shit, and party hard at a very early age. Their small bodies can’t take that kind of abuse, and it’s showing. On top of that, they wear pounds of makeup to cover up the abuse, which only further contributes to the problem.
Deathslayer quotes the expert testimony of a colleague who calls himself RealDealBrotha:
Look at how quickly these chick fall COMPLETELY off, yet they STILL think they can do everything a man does for as long as a man does it…. NOT! …
Look at all the females who whore away their prime years, or go into career mode, or just choose men for silly reasons and NOT try to better themselves enough to be WORTHY of a good man (who is NOT a simp) wifing them up. They have so little regard for men that they think that they can have good men at their beck and call after they’re aged out fat chicks dragging around kids who they had with other men. It REALLY does NOT work that way, yet they don’t ever figure out the obvious until it’s too late.
We see and hear this story all the time. It comes up so often, that it’s really funny to me now. It warms my heart to know how badly these arrogant, misandric, selfish, worthless women are doomed to crash, burn and live the remainder of their wretched lives as bitter old maids whose only value will be as jumpoffs for bottom-feeder men who lack the guts and the nuts to raise the bar.
It’s always nice to see MGTOWers complain about misandry in comments overflowing with angry misogyny.
Toadman, for his part, seems happy to ignore women altogether, celebrating his independence by sitting at home eating canned food that’s way past its expiration date.
I have an unopened can of pork-and-beans in the cupboard that will taste the same as when canned. It’s lasted longer than the 10-15 years of female fertile desireability. Talk about “shelf-life”.
Just look at this blatant burro misandry I found on Tumblr!
The Biblio-Donkey. This is an initiative by a teacher named Luis Soriano Borges, who travels through the most distant and hidden villages of Colombia to bring books to children. The male donkey is named Beto and the female is Alfa.
That’s right! Alfa and Beto! Just look at that alpha bitch burra marching along, so smug and carefree, while that poor beta trudges along behind her, forced to stare at that hot burra ass he will never have! And you just know that the slut burra is totally riding the alpha ass cock carousel.
NOTE: In all seriousness, what Borges is doing is awesome.
Up until now, as you all know, I’ve been a strong supporter of the gynofascist ladytopia. But after watching the following video I am beginning to reconsider. Three seconds is too short. This lady is too bossy. And I really, really don’t want to have to learn how to line dance. Also, why does everyone have to wear a white shirt? Watch, and you’ll see what I mean. If this is the ladytopia, I want none of it!
Look out, Jade Michael and the Fuck Their Shit Up Crew! Sure, your Men’s Rights theme song “Go My Own Way” was hailed by MRAs around the internet as a work of genius, and, in the words of one eminent critic angry misogynist dude,
a veritable anthem for the red pill crowd … replete with a great, purist rock sound, a touch of humor, attitude, and a ton of gut level, red pill honesty.
It’s Red Pill-riffic! But now Jade and the one other guy who makes up his, er, “crew” now have competition in the Men’s Rights anthem business!
Without futher ado, here is Slumberwall, with a little song called “The Hatred of Women.”
Did any of you make it past the one minute mark? I couldn’t.
Happily, Slumberwall has transcribed the terrible lyrics to the song, so you don’t have to listen to the whole thing in order to appreciate its true Men’s Rightsy awfulness. Here are the best bits, by which I mean the bits most likely to make you want to puncture your eardrums with knitting needles.
Men have no doubt
Just what they’re for
We die at work
We die in war
We die at sea
As the lifeboats float ashore
Women & children,
all aboard
Never mind that, as I pointed out yesterday, “women and children first” isn’t really a thing.
Anyway, back to Slumberwall:
We take the strain
We bear the load
Build the bridges
Sweep the roads
Make the houses
That make the homes
Pay for others
But live alone
And the more that it happens
The more I see
The hatred of women
For men like me
Well, if by “men like me” you mean “men who write and sing the shittiest music that has ever been made by human beings,” I have to say that I kind of understand this hatred.
I haven’t had a favorite song in a very long time. But I think this is it.
TheAetherspeak declares
Awesome Song. The voice all purveyors of patriarchy theory remain ignorant of.
Gamenode explains:
Women have never been oppressed but through their reproductive monopoly have exploited men and seen us butchered and enslaved for their own privilege. Fuck ’em all.
KellyJones00 adds,
Don’t fuck them at all. Just leave them alone. Don’t even donate sperm.
Time for a little bit of a musical palate cleanser.
Make sure to listen to all ten hours of that for the full palate-cleansing effect.
The Titanic sank 100 years ago today, and Men’s Rights Activists are still pissed off about it.
They’re not really pissed off that it sank. They’re pissed off that the men on board were more likely to go down with the ship than the women. You know, that whole “women and children first” thing.
Some MRAs were so pissed off about this that they were planning to march on Washington on this very day in an attempt, as they put it, to “Sink Misandry.”
You don’t know how much I would have loved to see this, a dozen angry dudes marching in circles on the National Mall carrying signs protesting the sinking of the Titanic and demanding that in all future sinkings of the Titanic that women and men be equally likely to drown in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. For that would be justice at last!
But, alas, due to unspecified logistical problems this march was cancelled some months back, and so misandry remains unsunk.
Or does it?
For you see, it turns out that the whole “women and children first” thing was not really a thing. Oh, on The Titanic it was. But women unfortunate enough to be passengers on sinking ships that weren’t the Titanic (or the HMS Birkenhead, which sunk off the coast of South Africa in 1852) weren’t able to push ahead to the front of the line. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new Swedish study (link is to a pdf of it).
The chivalrous code “women and children first” appears to have sunk with the Titanic 100 years ago.
Long believed to be the golden standard of conduct in a shipwreck, the noble edict is in fact “a myth that has been nourished by the Titanic disaster,” economist Mikael Elinder of Uppsala University, Sweden, told Discovery News.
Elinder and colleague Oscar Erixson analyzed a database of 18 peace-time shipwrecks over the period 1852–2011 in a new study into survival advantages at sea disasters.
Looking at the fate of over 15,000 people of more than 30 nationalities, the researchers found that more women and children die than men in maritime disasters, while captains and crew have a greater chance of survival than any passengers.
Being a woman was an advantage on only two ships: on the Birkenhead in 1852 and on the Titanic in 1912.
The notion of “women and children first” may have captured the popular imagination, but it’s never been an official policy for ship evacuations. It wouldn’t be fair, nor would it be an efficient way to get as many people as possible to safety.
Nor was “women and children” strictly enforced even on the Titanic. True, my great-grandfather, the mystery writer Jacques Futrelle, was one of those who went down with the ship, while his wife and my great-grandmother, writer Lily May Futrelle made it off safely (in the last lifeboat). But there were many men who survived, and many women who died.
If you want to get mad about the sinking of the Titanic all those years ago, get mad at the White Star Line for not bothering to equip the ship with lifeboats enough for everyone on it. Blame the captain, for ordering the ship to continue plowing ahead on a dark, foggy night into an area of the Atlantic where numerous icebergs had just been sighted by a number of other ships. Blame the crew for botching the evacuation – for the strange lack of urgency after the ship hit the iceberg, for the lifeboats leaving the sinking ship with half as many passengers as they could fit.
Much like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Elinder and Erixson’s research has poked a giant hole in the “women and children first” myth. Of course, MRAs aren’t interested in historical accuracy. They’re looking for excuses to demonize women and feminists. So I imagine we’ll be hearing about the Titanic from them for years to come.
Here’s another tragic sinking, of yet another ship without a sufficient number of lifeboats:
EDIT: I added a couple of relevant links and fixed a somewhat egregious typo.
Oh, the Men’s Rights subreddit is on a roll! Earlier in the week, as regular readers will already be well aware, a sizeable number of the regulars there were waxing indignant about a spermburgling girlfriend who turned out to be imaginary, and expressing sympathy for the imaginary girlfriend’s imaginary boyfriend, even though he’d admitted to punching her in her imaginary stomach.
Now they’re directing their wrath at a British journalist whom they’ve decided is being insufficiently grateful for being rescued from being hit by a speeding automobile by Ryan Gosling.
The backstory: Earlier in the week, British journalist Laurie Penny was wandering the streets of Manhattan, lost in thought, when she almost stepped off the curb into the path of a taxi. A man standing nearby grabbed her and pulled her to safety. That man happened to be famously hunky young actor Ryan Gosling.
Naturally, Penny tweeted about it, and her tweet aroused something of a Twitterstorm, in part because of the novelty of the situation, and in part because the thought of someone so dashing performing this little act of urban heroism made more than a few ladies (and men) swoon a little. I would probably react the same way if I heard a story about Kate Winslet saving a kitten.
Anyway, Penny was a little bit overwhelmed by all the attention her story was getting, and ended up writing a funny, spiky little essay for Gawker reminding people that while, yes, Ryan Gosling had indeed done a very nice thing for her, for which she was grateful, that it wasn’t really the biggest deal in the world. For one thing, she pointed out, lots of ordinary decent people perform similar acts of “heroism” all the time. For another, there are bigger heroes out there – like those working tirelessly to keep Rick Santorum from becoming our next president.
She ended the piece with this:
I really do object to being framed as the ditzy damsel in distress in this story. I do not mean any disrespect to Ryan Gosling, who is an excellent actor and, by all accounts, a personable and decent chap. …
But as a feminist, a writer, and a gentlewoman of fortune, I refuse to be cast in any sort of boring supporting female role, even though I have occasional trouble crossing the road, and even though I did swoon the teeniest tiniest bit when I realized it was him. I think that’s lazy storytelling, and I’m sure Ryan Gosling would agree with me.
And the thing is, I’m sure he would. I’m sure he’s as embarrassed about the attention as Penny is.
Well, for some people, Penny’s refusal to play the “boring supportive role” was simply unacceptable. Over on The National Review, antifeminist asshole Suzanne Venker wrote a snide and misleading piece portraying Penny as an ungrateful bitch:
If Western women want to know where all the good men have gone, they need only look in the mirror. Not only can men no longer hold the door open for women or pay the check after dinner, they can’t even save a woman’s life and get a simple thank you.
Never mind that Penny wrote explicitly that she was “grateful to the dashing and meme-worthy Mr. Gosling.” We can conclude that Venker either has terrible reading comprehension, or is deliberately lying about Penny. In any case, she continued on in this vein:
Feminists have totally destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Not all women seek the feminized version of the American male. Most women like big, strong, sexy men. They want men who are willing to put out fires, fight in combat, and, yes, even save damsels in distress. But in post-feminist America, Marlboro Man is a rare breed. We can thank women like Penny for that.
Well, actually, the reason the Marlboro Man isn’t around any more is that he died of lung cancer. (Well, to be more specific, two of the actors who portrayed the Marlboro Man did in fact die that way.) But let’s continue:
If Americans don’t wake up to the evils of feminism, the next time a woman walks down the wrong side of the street, the men of America will simply walk right past her and let her get hit.
And we’ll have no one blame but ourselves.
Really? Really? I’m pretty sure that Penny’s Gawker essay isn’t actually going to turn American men into a bunch of woman-hating psychopaths. I think we can all agree that Venker is being a giant turd here.
NOTE: THAT HEADLINE IS A JOKE. IT’S APRIL FOOL’S DAY.
In today’s edition of “Make Shit Up About Man Boobz,” we have this highly upvoted comment from the Men’s Rights subreddit attacking me (us?) for all the evil virgin shaming we supposedly do around here.
The total ridiculousness of this comment is fairly obvious. But I would like to take a moment to clarify a few things.
Being a virgin, or celibate? Not inherently funny.
Being a virgin, or someone who has had literally one sexual encounter with a woman ever, and writing post after post about how evil and icky vaginas are in an attempt to get other men to swear off women forever – that’s pretty funny. That would be a bit like me writing a travel guide to Denmark, or Albania, or any other place I’ve never been to.
Having trouble getting a date? Not inherently funny.
Also, sex toys themselves? Yes, they can be funny. I mean, the legendary Fleshlight is a disembodied vagina/mouth/asshole-replacement in the form of a giant clunky flashlight-shaped thing. That’s sort of funny. Attaching this giant clunky thing to an iPad so you can pretend that the iPad (or at least an image on it) is giving you a blowjob? That’s comedy gold!
Here are some other sex toys that are hilarious and/or seriously disturbing, courtesy of Scary Sextoy Friday, perhaps the world’s greatest blog. (All links are NSFW.)
