When confronted with the simple fact that men hold the overwhelming majority of positions of power in the world – in government, business, culture, and pretty much everything else – MRAs like to pretend that the actual gender of those in power makes no difference because, well, the men in power are probably a bunch of manginas doing the dirty work of the women who really run the world. Or something like that.
Indeed, some MRAs have even managed to convince themselves that the very basic historical and sociological fact that men in power, by and large, tend to represent men’s interests more than women’s interests is some sort of locical fallacy – something that they’ve labeled “The Frontman Fallacy.”
Now A Voice for Men contributor and YouTube videoblogger TyphonBlue has done these guys one better in terms of sheer antifeminist loopiness. In the comments on one of the Warren Farrell protest videos I recently wrote about, she argues that men in power don’t really push male interests because … they probably don’t even think of themselves as men.
Here she is, writing under her other nom-de-net Genderratic:
I don’t even know what to say to this. I mean, WHAT?!
PROTIP: You’re not going to convince anyone you’re a great ally of trans* people if you refer to them as “it.”
The imaginary feminist conspiracy plots against JohnTheOther
I am beginning to wonder – seriously wonder — if JohnTheOther of A Voice for Men has completely lost touch with reality.
Take a look at this angry, delusional tirade he posted on Reddit yesterday after a couple of his AVFM comrades were banned from Reddit, possibly for their promotion of “doxxing” – that is, their attempts to find and reveal the personal information of a Toronto feminist activist. In this embarrassing public meltdown, JtO turned on the regulars in the Men’s Rights subreddit for criticizing AVFM’s doxxing campaigns – and accused them, astonishingly, of being a gang of closet feminists.
If you stuff a bunch of angry, narcissistic, egotistical twits into a “movement” the size of a teapot, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be drama. So I’m pleased to report on a dramatic BREAKING STORY in the Men’s Rights “movement” – a split between A Voice for Men and the bald, blabby, bigoted far-right videoblogger Bernard Chapin.
Well, I’m not sure how much of a BREAKING STORY it is. It happened about three weeks ago, but I only just noticed it yesterday.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: Spokesmen for Clean Living
Listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” the other day, I was struck by how much the lyrics resembled a misogynistic MRA rant. Ostensibly a song pointing out the hypocrisy of suburban squares attacking the drug culture whilst themselves popping prescription pills, the song extends its “critique” to cover such subjects as the evil of women making cakes from mixes instead of from scratch. (See below for videos of all the songs mentioned in this post.)
Manosphere misogynists love fantasizing about a coming apocalypse, invariably caused by the bad behavior of feminists and/or women in general, and invariably resulting in feminists and/or women in general lost and forlorn and realizing their mistakes, returning to men begging for help and asking for forgiveness. Like Doomsday Preppers waiting for the planet to suddenly shift on its axis due to the sudden reversal of the magnetic poles, most of the apocalyptic misogynists don’t seem to have the faintest idea of what they’re talking about.
Dudes! Watch out! This pretty lady is falsely accusing you of something-or-other.
Feeling nostalgic for any of Man Boobz’ classic trolls? Here’s our old friend Anthony Zarat, now a regular Reddit Men’s Rightser, explaining some things about the ladies of today. Note: In order to understand what he’s saying, you need to know that when MRAs talk about “proxy violence,” they mean women calling the police on a dude, which women of course only do when men are completely innocent, because men are always innocent. (Also, in MRAland all police are men, and White Knights to boot.)
I like that he complains about women being “narcissistic,” then invents his own definition of “character” that applies to his own little obsession.
Reddit novelty accounts are usually bad, bad news, an excuse for horrendous racist or misogynist or otherwise appallingly Redditish “humor.” But a reader has pointed me to one new novelty account that’s actually pretty hilarious: the 3-day old account of MRAbot2000, which posts perfect distillations of MRA-think at every opportunity. (These are all from different discussions; the different widths of the various images are due to my laziness and incompetence.)
Despite Reddit being something of a cesspool of misogyny, MRAbot2000 mostly gets upvotes. (The comment above with the negative votes is in ShitRedditSays, where the mods have rigged it so downvotes equal upvotes.) Then again, MRAbot2000 hasn’t yet posted in the Men’s Rights subreddit, where somehow I suspect the reception would be a bit more chilly.
You can find many more nuggets of MRA “wisdom” in MRAbot2000’s comment history.
Paul Elam, head misogynist at A Voice for Men, is mad at the ladies again, his wrath provoked this time by an overheard conversation in a local coffeeshop between two women talking about recycling, and how the world would be a greener place if women were in charge.
Elam seems to take deep personal offense at any suggestion that men aren’t the absolute best at every single fucking thing, so he quickly scurried off to his computer to bash out a 1500-word screed that began with him insulting the women as bobbleheaded “latte lappers who were more likely than not completely clueless about how a single thing on the planet with a moving part works,” moved into high gear with some not altogether wrong (if rather trite and woman-blamey) critiques of the diamond and fur industries, and wound up with a stern warning that WOMEN ARE DESTROY9ING THE EARTH WITH ALL THEIR SPENDY SPENDING!!1!!!
Over on A Voice for Men, headquarters of the Greatest Super Awesome Human Rights Movement of the New Millennium, the regulars are troubled by those who make jokes and other unkind remarks about small penises, noting that this sort of body-shaming can wound the self-esteem of its targets and “has fostered a growing penis enlargement industry praying [sic] on young mens distorted perceptions of normality and worth.”
As a result, the AVFM regulars have vowed to set a higher standard of behavior for themselves, and not resort to easy body-shaming when arguing with, or talking about, women.
Ah, just kidding. They tried to see who could come up with the worst way to tell a woman she has a giant vagina.
Until recently, Michael Calleri was a movie reviewer for the Niagara Falls Reporter. Indeed, he’d been reviewing movies for the weekly paper for more than 20 years. But then the paper got sold to a new owner, and Calleri found that many of the reviews he sent in weren’t making their way into print. He contacted the new publisher, who was also the new editor, and after several surreal conversations and a number of emails, he received this explanation from his new boss:
i have a deep moral objection to publishing reviews of films that offend me. snow white and the huntsman is such a film. when my boys were young i would never have allowed them to go to such a film for i believe it would injure their developing manhood. if i would not let my own sons see it, why would i want to publish anything about it?
Yeah, I think we can all see where this is going.
snow white and the huntsman is trash. moral garbage. a lot of fuzzy feminist thinking and pandering to creepy hollywood mores produced by metrosexual imbeciles.
I don’t want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta.
where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females.
i believe in manliness.
not even on the web would i want to attach my name to snow white and the huntsman except to deconstruct its moral rot and its appeal to unmanly perfidious creeps.
i’m not sure what headhunter has to offer either but of what I read about it it sounds kind of creepy and morally repugnant.
with all the publications in the world who glorify what i find offensive, it should not be hard for you to publish your reviews with any number of these.
they seem to like critiques from an artistic standpoint without a word about the moral turpitude seeping into the consciousness of young people who go to watch such things as snow white and get indoctrinated to the hollywood agenda of glorifying degenerate power women and promoting as natural the weakling, hyena -like men, cum eunuchs.
Oh, but the new boss made clear that he was open to some sorts of reviews from Calleri:
If you care to write reviews where men act like good strong men and have a heroic inspiring influence on young people to build up their character (if there are such movies being made) i will be glad to publish these.
i am not interested in supporting the reversing of traditional gender roles.
i don’t want to associate the Niagara Falls Reporter with the trash of Hollywood and their ilk.
it is my opinion that hollywood has robbed america of its manliness and made us a nation of eunuchs who lacking all manliness welcome in the coming police state. …
In short i don’t care to publish reviews of films that offend me.
if you care to condemn the filmmakers as the pandering weasels that they are…. true hyenas.
i would be interested in that….
So, yeah, apparently the Niagara Falls Reporter is now being edited by a barely literate misogynist who seems like he just stepped out of the comments section of The Spearhead.