Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, one of the “activists” is planning a “digital protest” on International Male Men’s Day. He just hopes someone else will do the work for him.
Category: MRA paradox
There is good news, and bad news, and completely predictable news in the fight against prison rape. The good news: the Justice Department last week announced a major new initiative designed to fight against prison rape. The bad news: it’s being opposed by right-wing ideologues. As Think Progress explains:
This week, the Department of Justice published new standards addressing the epidemic of rape and sexual abuse in our nation’s prisons. The guidelines, which apply immediately to federal prisons and give financial incentives for states to comply, are a laudable, widely praised, and long overdue step in combating rape in the United States.
The American Action Forum, a Wall Street-funded group whose C(4) runs millions of dollars in attack ads against Democrats, responded by lambasting the move as too “costly” and “complicated.” …
The Weekly Standard echoed AAF’s response, bemoaning the cost of preventing people from being raped in prison. The total expected cost is less than 1 percent of the overall cost of our prison system and ultimately “end up saving money — for example, by avoiding the medical costs of injuries suffered by rape victims,” according to the New York Times.
The completely predictable news? Men’s Rights Activists are completely oblivious to all this.
If the Men’s Rights movement were truly concerned with helping men, rather than playing “oppression Olympics” and complaining about feminists and women in general, they would be all over this issue. But I have seen nothing about this on any site in the manosphere, aside from one post on the Men’s Rights subreddit that drew all of six (mostly ignorant) comments. (Looking through one large thread on the subject of prison rape that was recently on r/mensrights’ front page, I found zero references to the Justice Department’s new initiative.)
What accounts for this obliviousness? It could be because MRAs tend to regard the Obama administration as a tool of our (imaginary) feminazi overlordsladies. Or because they would have to acknowledge that women are also raped in prison. But I think the real reason is that MRAs are so disconnected from real activists working in the real world to combat prison rape that they are completely unaware of any of this.
If you are interested in getting involved, or just learning more about the issue, I’d suggest checking out the website of the group Just Detention International, which campaigns against prison rape.
For more links, see this post of mine.
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So the other day I was perusing the front page of the angry dude blog – sorry, “human rights organization” – A Voice for Men, looking for something inspiring to read. My eyes hit on a promo for a recent AVFM radio show. It was on the topic of feminism, and, apparently, women in general:
Flatworms, eh? You know, those “relatively simple bilaterian, unsegmented, soft-bodied invertebrate animals” without brains, with primitive eye spots that allow them to sense light?
As you know, human rights organizations are widely known for comparing large categories of humanity to primitive worms.
I am reminded of the inspiring words of Martin Luther King:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And by the fact that they’re not slimy, dirt-eating worms, like all those damn white kids.
This is, of course, from King’s famous “I had a dream – a really weird dream, where all the white people were worms” speech.
Oh, perhaps JohnTheOther and GirlWritesWhat have some highly clever explanation for that whole “flatworm” thing, but in order to find out I would have to listen to their “radio” show. But life is short, it is a lovely, if a bit chilly, Saturday in April, and I would rather have ferrets chew the flesh off my bones while I am still alive than listen to an hour or more of those two, so I guess I will never know.
But no matter, because there was another post on A Voice for Men that caught my eye:
Yes, I said to myself, I will have to find out what Cooter Bee thinks about the differences between intellect and emotionalism. In the course of my day to day life, I often find myself pondering the deeper philosophical questions of human existence, and when I do, I always wonder: What does Cooter Bee think of that? It is rare that I actually get to learn what Cooter Bee thinks on a particular matter of philosophical import. So naturally I clicked on the link.
Here’s what I learned from the esteemed Professor Cooter Bee:
Endless citation, refutation of fallacy and Socratic pursuit of truth are the tools of reason. Men tend to understand them. Women, generally speaking, don’t because indignation, outrage and gut level distaste are rooted in emotionalism. Women do understand base emotionalism and do respond to it in a more predictable way than they could ever respond to reason. They are also more likely to respond appropriately because the message is more clearly understood. Emotionalism is their language.
So, really, there’s no point in actually arguing anything with those flighty ladies.
No need to waste words or knock yourself out reasoning with feminists or even your wife, for that matter, when a short and visceral pronouncement from on high will do and is more effective.
For example, you can just call them sluts:
Sluts are against slut shaming because sluttiness is, indeed, shameful. Say so. Your position would be unassailable because they too believe it. They invoke moral relativism and slut pride marches as a means to escape the inescapable.
Actually, it’s better if you call the ladies sluts over and over and over again:
Slut Walks, “Sex in the City” and the self esteem cult are all attempts to reassure women that even when they behave abominably that the bad behavior has the sanction of the collective and they face no risk of expulsion if they engage in it. To modify the behavior of women, reimpose that risk. The good news is that it can be done in relatively short order. … A stark and unvarnished remonstration from someone in closer proximity will undo the propaganda swiftly. Declarations of “that is disgusting” accumulate. Hearing it once may not overcome Cosmo and she can dismiss it as an isolated raving of a lunatic. If she were to hear it more often, however, she begins to doubt herself and wonder about her status within her more immediate collective.
You can also modify chick behavior by praising them when they act the way you like them to. It’s really quite simple:
Chick language provides us with a construct that we can use. To women something is “nice” or it is “mean”. They use that simple, emotionally based dichotomy because that is what chicks understand. They use it with us and they use it with each other. That is how they evaluate the world. Use it. …
Most women want to be good so tell them what good is in a way they can grasp easily.
What if they disagree with your assessment of what is good? Doesn’t matter, because you are a man, and therefore right:
Who is to decide what is good and what is evil? Simple. You are. Some men might think it arrogant to anoint themselves as the final arbiter of all moral issues. Not true. As a man, nature equipped you to make decisions based on merit alone without respect to consensus. … You know right and wrong when you see it.
Are there any good women out there? Yes, Cooter Bee tells us. Indeed, there are several women who contribute to AVFM, so there’s them. Beyond that, Dr. Bee, tells us,
I am of the belief that most women are good, if somewhat misled. They only resist righteousness because they think that any behavior that the collective endorses IS righteous. The rare woman who is capable of moral judgment will select good herself and would not be on the receiving end of harsh moral criticism.
Then again, you still might have to yell at the good women from time to time. Really, it’s your duty – it’s for her own good.
Good women are human too. Even in the seldom occurring event of a temporary moral lapse by a decent woman, your diatribe will be no more severe than the one she administers to herself. Would you do less in the case of a man whose judgment falters?
Thank you, Cooter Bee, for your insights!
I had no idea that going around telling women that they’re sluts was a form of human rights advocacy, but apparently it is. The next time I see a woman standing on the streetcorner trying to get me to sign a petition for Amnesty International, I will simply tell her what a dirty whore she is. I will accomplish more with these words than she will in a day of collecting signatures and donations!
NOTE: Since you bring it up all the time, fellas, you might try to remember that the name of the show is Sex AND the City. Also, it ceased production eight years ago.
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Sometimes I ask myself: what is it that I really hope to accomplish with this website, aside from entertaining myself and my readers, and exposing misogynist assholes for who they are. There’s a part of me that still hopes that someday, something I write will cause some misogynist and/or Men’s Rightser out there to develop a modicum of self-awareness, look at what they’ve been saying or doing, and say to themselves, “I’m really kind of a tool, aren’t I? Maybe I should stop.”
When the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the Men’s Rights movement came out, I hoped it might have a similar sort of effect. Or that, even if it didn’t persuade any MRAs out there that they were wrong, it might at least convince a few that they were going about things the wrong way. Nope. On the Men’s Rights subreddit, at least, it seems to have sent many of the regulars into an indignant tizzy, and they have doubled down on their peculiar brand of politics-by-whining-online.
Consider this post:
Yes, that’s right. Some Men’s Rights Redditors seem to think that the best way to convince the world that they’re not part of a hate group is to continue to celebrate a self-admitted child abuser who urged men to firebomb courthouses and police stations and kill people.
Then there’s this post, currently the top post on the subreddit:
Wow, if the Men’s Rights subreddit had anything to do with that, that would indeed be a victory. As one regular put it:
Thing is, I read r/mensrights pretty regularly, and I don’t remember any campaign there to protect the rights of fishermen in New Zealand.
Turns out that’s because the campaign, such as it was, consisted of one post some months back, which got all of 11 upvotes at the time. The current post in which r/mensrights congratulates itself for its “victory” has gotten, last I checked, 120 upvotes, more than ten times that. Simplecosine’s self-congratulatory comment in the new thread has gotten 36 upvotes. The comment in the original thread asking r/mensrightsers to send an email to the US Secretary of State’s office got … one upvote. In other words, only a handful of Men’s Rights Redditors even noticed the original post, much less sent along an email.
Reading one of the linked news articles makes clear the real reason the State Department opened an investigation: a six-month long, three-continent wide investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek revealing abuses in the industry.
The Men’s Rights subreddit: Taking Credit for Shit They Didn’t Do Since 2008.
And then there’s this post:
I’ve got nothing to say about this one — it’s basically self-refuting — except that I’m sort of bemused by the notion that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “semi-women group.” Uh, what is that exactly? A group with some women in it? A group that doesn’t think women are all a bunch of evil bitches? The horror!
Oh, Men’s Rights movement. You’ll never change, will you?
EDITED TO ADD: And speaking of never changing, here’s how one Men’s Rights redditor responded to my comments there suggesting that maybe, just maybe, MRAs should actually denounce and distance themselves from someone calling for terrorism:
Let me just highlight that bit at the end again:
[T]he cost to the establishment to maintain the status quo in regards to divorce, custody, etc. must be made so high that it’s just no longer feasible. If that means instilling abject fear into the hearts of judges, cops and legislators by making them think their careers and/or lives could be forfeit unless they change their attitudes towards men, then so be it.
Trying to instill fear for one’s life in your opponents: that is the very definition of terrorism.
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Sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves that despite all the noise they make online, the Men’s Rights movement has basically no presence in the real world. The picture above is an actual photo of a men’s rights symposium at Montana State University. Here’s how the local NBC affiliate described what went down – or, more accurately, what didn’t go down:
The MSU chapter of the National Coalition for Men organized a symposium to raise awareness of problems in men’s lives.
The group geared the event towards fraternity students at the college and invited speakers to talk about things like men’s rights when it comes to sexual misconduct investigations on-campus.
No one showed up to the event but organizers say the lack of attendance is not due to a lack of interest.
You just keep telling yourself that.
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Some links for Friday night:
Jezebel’s Anna North takes up the question “What Should You Do When Someone You Love Becomes a Men’s Rights Activist?”
North quotes me and Hugo Schwyzer on the topic. Here’s the extended remix of my remarks:
Unfortunately, in most cases, I don’t think it’s possible to talk someone out of a Men’s Rights obsession. For most of them, it seems to be driven not by facts — they’re happy to simply make up facts to fit their worldview — but by feelings, most obviously by rage at women. If they were driven by actual interest in issues, they probably would have accomplished something by now; in reality, only the overlapping but more politically focused Father’s Rights movement has actually had much of an effect on the real world, for better or worse. For most MRAs, the closest they come to activism is leaving angry comments everywhere online — or harassing individual women online in a manner similar to the ways abusers stalk the objects of their obsessions.
The one argument I think you can make to MRAs who are not too far gone is this: it’s not healthy for you to spend so much time stewing in your anger online. Instead of trying to help men work through their personal issues with women, the MRM encourages men to cultivate their rages and hatreds, to remain stuck. That’s not healthy for them, or for society at large.
North’s post was inspired by a recent Dear Prudence question on Slate from a girl whose dad had recently gone all MRA on her. (It’s here, scroll down a bit to the question that starts “Dad-Related Dilemma.:)
The guys at The Spearhead also had a whack at the Dear Prudence question here. Needless to say their perspective is a little different than mine or Hugo’s.
And while I’m doing links, here’s another misogyny-related post on Jezebel: Founder of Possible Sex Tourist Website Creates Elaborate Ad Campaign Telling Men to Beware of Marriage
It’s a lot of the same old shit we’ve seen before from marriage-hating MGTOWers and Western-women-haters. But entertaining nonetheless.
And last but not least: checking my traffic today I discovered that Man Boobz is big in Brazil! By which I mean, a professor at the Federal University of Ceará is a fan, and has started making fun of obnoxious Brazilian misogynists on her blog. Olá Lola!
As far as I can tell from the badly Google-translated version of her blog, the Brazilian versions of Man Boobz (Homens Idiotas?) are pretty much identical to our Man Boobz, right on down to their obsessions with alphas and betas and all that crap.
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As “activists,” Men’s Rights Activists seem to be good at only two things: harassing people, and flooding comment sections of websites with their endlessly repeated half-dozen talking points. On Reddit, for example, the local MRAs have been quite the little imperialists, invading a number of gender-related subreddits (like r/equality and r/egalitarian) and turning them essentially into r/mensrights-lite, which has effectively meant killing them. (The recently started r/masculism – an attempt to do Men’s Rights on Reddit without all the misogyny – doesn’t have a chance.)
Well, now the MRA invaders on Reddit seem to have set their sights on a much bigger target: the TwoXChromosomes subreddit. Yep, they’re trying to turn Reddit’s central hangout for the ladies into a boys club.
2XC– an explicitly female-oriented forum on a site (Reddit) heavily dominated by dudes — has always been a strange place. Though I am myself, obviously, a dude, I used to read it fairly regularly, finding it a welcome respite from all the “sammich” jokes and other idiot misogyny so pervasive elsewhere on Reddit. At the time, 2XC had a (completely unwarranted) reputation amongst the Reddit crowd as an evil place full of feminazi man-haters.
Then something started happening to 2XC. That thing was dudes. And not just any dudes – MRA dudes. Regulars on r/mensrights started linking to threads in 2XC and invading en masse, downvoting anything vaguely feminist and spewing forth their standard litanies of complaint. Some of these invaders decided to stay. And so, these sporadic raiding parties turned into a sort of occupation.
No, 2XC – despite the growing number of MRA residents, including a few female MRAs – has not turned into another r/mensrights. But at times, especially when the discussion turns to some MRA pet issue, the place looks a lot like dude central.
Case in point: this 2XC thread, expertly dissected by NauticalLittleNet in ShitRedditSays. The story: a woman posts a picture of her Halloween costume on Reddit and is bugged by a rude, creepy comment referring to her breasts (something that happens approximately ten zillion times a day on Reddit). So she posts the pic again to 2XC, hoping for sympathy. Instead, she’s treated to a barrage of comments mocking her for her alleged “persecution complex.” As NauticalLittleNet shows, the overwhelming majority of the obnoxious comments (all of which garnered numerous upvotes) were from dudes, many of them MRAs.
Naturally, this sort of thing – which happens pretty regularly on 2XC – has totally changed the dynamic of the subreddit from something that was sort of a haven for Reddit women to just another subreddit overflowing with obnoxious dudery.
As a Redditor called emmster noted recently in r/feminist, some women in 2XC have basically stopped posting anything vaguely feminist for fear of being jumped on by argumentative dudes:
I’ll be getting downvoted to Hell in the comments, but get PMs that are supportive from women who feel too afraid of the judgment and vitriol to jump in. I don’t love knowing there are women afraid to voice their opinions in a space that’s for women.
Honestly, I think the sustained r/MensRights invasion is what’s taking the largest toll. It’s like they can’t stand the idea that women have a space that’s active and popular, and they have to come ruin it.
And it doesn’t help that, as Donna_Juanita noted in the same discussion, some of the 2XC mods have essentially bent over backwards to accommodate the MRA invaders and to clamp down on feminists allegedly causing “drama.”
In ShitRedditSays, emmster offers a broader take on what’s happened to 2XC
Since young men are a majority on the site as a whole, and a pretty hefty number of them haven’t had the “There Are Places I Am Not Necessarily Welcome to Pontificate on My Opinion” realization, the space becomes less of a place for women, and more of a place to talk about women. Which is a pretty big distinction. And a tricky thing to keep from happening without raising the ire of the entitled, ignorant young dude contingent.
As a reddit friend of mine put it, it all started with the “Hey Ladies, What Do You Think of My Dick?” posts. When a bunch of guys started posting questions, trying to “understand women,” which of course is a flawed goal, because women, being people, have a variety of opinions and preferences, and cannot actually be understood as a group. Some of them were actually questioning preferences on penis size, hence the name of the phenomenon.
My hypothesis is that eventually, it will be nothing but men talking to men about what they think about women.
Not that there is a shortage of such spaces on Reddit, or in the world in general.
By the way, that picture above is not actually a picture of 2XC regulars. It’s a picture of the Huutajat Men’s Shouting Choir. Which is a real thing in the world. Here they are in action:
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Hey, fellas! Do you hate feminists but also hate doing things? Our good friend over at the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog has an idea for you: strike at the heart of the feminazi matriarchy by “denying marriage and denying children to women.” This, PMAFT (for short) argues, will effectively transfer “the costs of misandry … back on to women.” And all you have to do is: nothing!
Apparently, feminist ladies have an insatiable need to marry and make babies with men who hate them. All you need to do to thwart this evil plan is to not have sex with them. But wait a minute, you say, don’t ladies make the babies themselves, in their bellies? Well, yes they do. But unfortunately for them they also need a little something from you as well. No, not your money – that comes later. You know that white stuff that comes out of your penis when you masturbate? Ladies actually need that in order to make babies. And you control the supply! Cut them off! Embargo that shit.
Also, if you ever find yourself in a chapel with one of these ladies, and some religious looking dude starts asking you all sorts of questions, do not – I repeat, do not – answer any of them with the phrase “I do.” That’s how they get you.
The great thing about denying ladies your babies is that it also helps you to strike back at your parents – by denying them grandchildren! Ha HA! As PMAFT helpfully explains:
Our parents’ generation had one foot in the old system and one foot in the feminist system. This meant that many of them have completely avoided the consequences of supporting feminism. I see this with my own parents who don’t particularly think of themselves as “feminists” but have effectively supported feminism all the same. They have experienced absolutely no consequences from their support of feminism. This goes for both my mom and my dad. …
Most of our parents want grandchildren so denying them grandchildren really forces the cost of misandry back on to them. This is particularly effective when done by only children or by men who have only brothers. Even for men who have sisters, this can still be effective if it prevents the “family name” from being passed on.
In your face! No babies for you!
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Courtesy of SomeGreyBloke, here’s a cartoon depicting one man’s — well, more specifically, one grey bloke’s — moment of Man-lightenment! And ladies, if you find yourself irresistibly drawn to this grey man with the yellow teeth, you’ll be pleased to know that he’s single!
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Great post by Ozymandias on her blog on the subject of “Who cares about men’s rights?” (Answer, Ozymandias, for one.) She offers a devastating critique of the Men’s Rights Movement and a critique of feminism I think I half-agree with as well. (She critiques feminists for not caring enough about men’s issues and responding to them with “but what about the menz” mockery; I think she’s got a point, but the fact is that lots of feminists do in fact work on behalf of men and men’s issues, from feminists involved in fighting for men and women falsely accused of sex crimes to feminist shelter workers who work on a regular basis to help male victims of abuse.)
Anyway, you should pop on over and read it.
It’s being discussed all over Reddit as well.
The post also inspired a debate on the old “chicks only want to date jerks” thing, which she’s broken out into a separate post.
EDITED TO ADD: And now The Spearhead has noticed the post.
