So here’s an interesting chart. Guess what it represents?
A) The membership of the David Duke Fan Club
B) The racial breakdown of the most successful Liberace impersonators
C) The demographics of the Men’s Rights subreddit
Well, ok, that was too easy. It is of course all of the above. I’m guessing. It’s definitely C, at least, as this chart was prepared to show the results of the 2013 Men’s Rights subreddit demographic survey.
Now, you might say, well, isn’t Reddit itself a pretty white place? And you would be right. But the Men’s Rights subreddit seems to be a bit whiter — and a lot less black — than Reddit as a whole, if Quantcast’s estimates of Reddit’s overall ethnic breakdown are accurate.
In other completely non-surprising news, 89% of Men’s Rights Redditors are men. And a lot of them are libertarians. MRAs complain endlessly that we pigeonhole them as a bunch of entitled white dudes. They’re really not doing much to challenge that assumption.
The most important issue to these fellas (and the small minority that aren’t fellas)? Survey says: False rape accusations.
Other critical issues to the Men’s Rightsers include “custody rights” (which is a bit odd because 92% of those surveyed have no kids), “legal discrimination” (whatever that means), “education discrimination” (this is a thing?), and “male disposability.”
“Male birth control” and “paper abortion,” while relatively less important to the Men’s Rightsers, each got hundreds of votes.
I’m surprised “friendzoning” isn’t at the top of the list, but unfortunately it wasn’t one of the choices. I blame misandry.
I always wonder about the double period. It’s quite common among trolls and almost unknown among non-trolls. The frequency of occurrence and the complete dearth of other double punctuation (say, double commas) suggests that it can’t be an accident, yet unlike other common grammar mistakes, there’s no obvious source of confusion that would lead them to think it was correct. Is it supposed to be a period? An ellipsis? Is there some prominent yet grammar-impaired blogger who’s the source of this error?
Or is there really only one troll?
I spent about 7 hours in the car today, driving to Place X, to be there for all of 1 hour, and then drove back home. I wasn’t going to see friends or so anything fun, it was an inconvenient necessity. I was by myself in the car the whole day and didn’t even listen to a lot of music.
After scrolling this thread, I’ve concluded I spent my day in a way that had more value than reading just one of Obtuse’s comments. Jesus wept.
Fibinachi, great comment!
Argenti, thanks for doing the survey! I did a post about it.
And on a completely other note, O said in passing that our dear friend Hugo Schwyzer was no longer associated with Jezebel. Not sure where he got this, er, info, but Hugo wrote something for Jezebel not three days ago, so I’m pretty sure he’s still writing for them.
drst – spot on.
I’m sorry, I’m still catching up! I kinda missed just how large this thread has become. Yikes.
“O: Indeed; but how many of them support it for the simple reason that Men ought to be able to find sexual satisfaction with those whom they deem desirable, and are willing to do so?”
Because that has nothing to do with human rights. Sex with a HB10 is not a right, sorry. Women are people, even women who sell sexual services. Sex workers rights are about making sure that the workers are treated fairly and can make good choices. It is also about making sure that men are protected from being jailed for using their services. It is not about men being able to have any kind of sex with any woman he wants to. Sex workers can and do turn away certain clients with certain sexual tastes. Full decrim would make the work out in the open and lessen things like trafficking and abusive pimps.
As far as I can tell IMBRA is due to men abusing and murdering foreign women they brought here as mail-order brides. I don’t see how this is stopping men from marrying anyone. It is set up to protect people who are in a vulnerable position being exploited and it says in the wiki that dating sites have grown to appreciate it.
Well thanks for teaching me a new word though. I didn’t know what trivium was.
By the way if you are trying to come off as pompous and pedantic you are doing a bang up job.
I am not preaching, just trying to present my views honestly. You on the other hand seem only willing to shove your blog down our throats and act generally troll-like.
Dvar: “I don’t find skinny women attractive and I’ve only slept with more or less chubby ones, but I somehow still manage to respect my own skinny self.”
I have no type and I am I guess what is called omni-sexual (does this include trans* people?). I love fat, skinny, muscular, waif-like and any race/ethnicity of all people. I just see one thing=human. I am short, boxy and muscular and androgenous. I have also never seen any feminist talk about trying to make people date anyone they aren’t attracted to, nor have I ever seen anyone talk about appearance in such a hateful way as they do in the MRM. Variety is what makes the human race so prolific! Celebrate it.
I really don’t understand where this “feminists want to make men date fat women/older women/whatever” stuff comes from*. Dude, if you find women in group X repulsive then trust me, they probably don’t want to date you either! Why anyone would think that feminists would concern ourselves with trying to persuade people in group A to fuck people in group B in a general sense I’m not sure.
*I strongly suspect that the answer may be “some petulant manchild’s ass”.
It’s probably yet more projection. They’re dead keen on women being required to fuck them on demand, and presume women feel the same way about men.
It does seem like the kind of thing that GGG might come up with while trying to wrap his head around the notion that if, as we keep telling him, women are people, then we must want the same things that he does. Right? That’s how it works, right?
The double period is some kind of ellipsis,like I would like to write more or explain more, but I won’t do it here, because {That is beneath me ; you wouldn’t understand anyway; I’m far too smug for that; can’t you see I’m busy, Real Men will understand anyway}..
I think what happens is that when feminists say, “Be respectful to fat people. It is wrong to fat shame them.”, the PUA’s hear, “You are obligated to fuck fat women to prove you’re not fat phobic”. Their “logic” here is just completely bizarre.
They are also mad that more and more, other people call them out when they act like assholes to fat women. Fat jokes and fat shaming used to be more socially acceptable, and jerks would cheer about Al Bundy making fun of fat women. Now things are changing, although it is still pretty bad. It is more likely that if they make obnoxious comments, that other people will stick up for the fat women.
So because these guys are so self absorbed, they think they are oppressed by other people telling them they are assholes. It never registers to them that fat women are people with feelings in any of this.
Again, it seems to be projection. Notice how often MRAs, PUA, and incels interpret “woman doesn’t want to have sex with me” as “woman doesn’t treat me as if I’m human”? I think they’re universalizing from their own (deeply fucked up) perspective.
Bionicmommy/Cassandra: And when you ask them for examples of this attitude (that dudes can’t have preferences) they flake, and stammer,and fail to provide any.
“does this include trans* people?”
Generally I’ve seen that answer as “yes, it does”. But pansexual’s the same in that regard. (And plenty of people who ID as bisexual don’t mean cis men and cis women, it gets complicated when you get from “trans* people are people” to “trans* people sometimes have sex”)
You probably hit the nail on the head there!
As I said in another thread, I’m skinny myself, but my taste in women really go towards the chubbier. Like, I wouldn’t find my own clone sexually attractive. (Sorry for the boner report, but I think that this particular one is fairly innocent and relevant to the point I’m gonna make.) This, fortunately, does NOT mean that I have to disrespect myself, hate myself or think of myself as subhuman. Neither does it mean that I have to consider Husband, who thinks I’m super attractive, weird or objectively wrong in his preferences.
Oops, saw now that I made that point in this very thread, I thought it was somewhere else I said that. Sorry for repeating myself.
Regarding the issue of pan vs bi that Argenti discusses, I tend to identify as bi rather than pan. Mostly because I’ve been calling myself bi since I came out of the closet when I was nineteen; back then I didn’t even know the word “pan”. Nowadays, I must say I’m not quite certain what “pan” means and if and if so how it differs from “bi”. I’ve heard different people use different definitions; there’s probably no right one. One definition I’ve heard is that bi people only want to sleep with either men or women, while pan people also are attracted to genderqueers. According to that definition I might be pan – I’ve only slept with men and women as far as I know, but I can’t be certain of course, and I can’t know the exact gender identity of every person I’ve felt sexually attracted to (since I’m the kind of person who really finds loads and loads of people attractive, not just people I personally know). Another definition I heard is that pan people are “gender-blind”. I’m not certain I even understand what that means, but… I guess I might not be “gender-blind”? Because I tend to find different kinds of features attractive in men vs women?
Feels just easier to call myself “bi”. Not the least since people outside of particular radical/queer/sex-positive feminist spaces knows what that means.
Dvärghundspossen — pretty much what you said applies to me too. I’m cool with sexytimes (with people also interested) regardless anatomy, though androgyny does more for my immediate “yes, attractive” meter. But I’ve ID’ed as bi since like 16 or so, and like you, didn’t know pan was a thing then (this is part of why I put the three together on the sexuality section of the survey actually, the differences in who you’re attached to, and how, seem small and hard to quantify, and yep, plenty of people don’t have a clue what the difference is // realize pan exists)
Semi-funny story about the term omnisexual. First time I heard it was regarding Captain Jack, so in my mind it includes aliens capable of consent (LBT, maybe M.D.’s zapping isn’t so squicky?)
My brain is made of jello.
You know, there’s a particular gender identity that I’m often super attracted to and I don’t know quite how to explain it. Men who’re androgynous and very pretty (as opposed to handsome) facially but with a typically masculine (though skinny) body shape? With a presentation that’s noticeably gentle and often perceived by others as feminine or gay (I’m talking behavior and personality now, not looks)? Anyone who’s known me for any length of time can spot guys who I’m likely to go for because they fit into that specific gender niche immediately, but I have no idea if there’s a less wordy way to explain it.
When I say I’m bisexual, I mean I am capable of being attracted to people with the same gender or with different genders than myself. And this shouldn’t need to be said, but since the question always seems to arise when these discussions come up, when I say “same gender” I am of course including trans women as well as cis women.
Viscaria — nail head, you hit it with that “shouldn’t need to be said”.
I’m slowly catching up on the ridiculous amount of comments here so forgive me for constantly being pages behind but I find it funny that Obsidian seems to think these sex/gender activist movements should be inherently racist in the beginning until they’ve had a few decades to mature. He bases this on how feminism had severe racism issues during the initial waves while ignoring that it was a time in which we were still growing as a country to move out of our overtly racist past. Not to say there are no longer problems with racism, of course there are, and not to say that racism was justified, and of course there are going to be feminists who are insensitive to issues of race simply because there are a lot of people who are insensitive to issues of race. But you don’t have the unapologetically racist society who still participates in legal segregation to consider for the bass of your movement’s blatant racism…. you just have a bunch of racist dudes in a society where that type of ignorance is willful. You don’t get a get out of jail free card for being a young movement when the movement started in a time where mainstream media put tons of focus and energy on promoting equality. But keep comparing apples to oranges I guess.
RE: CassandraSays
You mean you might be… ‘meterosexual?’ *ducks rotten fruit*
RE: Argenti
LBT, maybe M.D.’s zapping isn’t so squicky?
Definitely doesn’t have to be. Alas for her, Raige isn’t into it. Her zapping doesn’t get used outside of combat or practical use, really. (Jumper cables!)
@Cassandra – that’s the type of man I’ve been mentally* attracted to since forever. Must have long hair and moustache, but feminine features, and a softish body type (ie. not the inverted carrot look – I don’t like really wide, square shoulders). No wonder I couldn’t look away from Mr K’s picture the first time I saw it. 😛
*wouldn’t have acted on it if I’d met one in real life; this was all pictorial.
Inverted carrot? But the top is wider…I don’t…
Ignore me, I can barely understand what is fork currently.
Hmm, you’re not the only one whose brain is jello! Think carrot or inverted triangle.
Mind you a triangle-shape with feet bigger than head wouldn’t do it for me either.
Oh, I love the inverted carrot, with big shoulders and tiny hips. Especially if he’s wearing more eyeliner than I am.
If you cannot provide me with a scientific study proving that feminists date short men I’m going to continue to believe that no feminists date short men. My desire for proof of something completely irrelevant to anyone’s actual rights is more important than your personal time and energy.
They’re building new prisons to house POC who they disproportionately incarcerate for non-violent drug related crimes. Good to know you support the needless incarceration of other POC.
A 2% decrease is not “really low” and an increase in the country as a whole really doesn’t say much about the ability of law enforcement, to me it more suggests that criminals are spreading out beyond major cities.
OOOOOHHHHH MYYYYY GOOOOOOOOOOODDDDD!
So if you didn’t have game you would support rape, because men gotta get laid somehow?
the very MRA Reddit Dave and the rest of you are upbraiding; yet, your Whiteness isn’t as bad as theirs. Riiight…
When you say, your whiteness isn’t as bad as theirs,” it’s kind of a loaded statement. You’re saying there’s something inherently wrong with being white, which is not the issue here. The issue is what you do with your whiteness. Do you use your white privilege to silence POC and make them feel unwelcome in your space specifically for their race? I don’t feel this feminist space does that, but I’ve yet to see a space within the manosphere that doesn’t include at least subtle hints at racism. I know you were trying to connect our desire for you to go away with your race and not your “I know you are but what am I?” style of debate, but it’s simply not the case.
This is just plain ignorance and a dangerous mindset to spread around that it’s a primarily gay man’s problem.
Again, everyone here, do a shit ton of work to prove something to me, right now. Meanwhile, here, in this comments section, you stated that the only reason you aren’t down for rape is because you don’t need to. That’s rapey without having to read 325 posts.
Right now, you’re demanding a survey of all this website’s readers, surveys of other websites’ readers which we don’t have posting privileges on, a survey of all feminists and whether or not they date short men, and to read all 325 of your posts to point out all examples of your rapey thoughts. Come to a forum, say nothing of substance, and demand unpaid labor on the part of the regular commentators. But you’re not welcome here because of your race, not because of your insufferable personality.
Also, loling about his statement about black women being in college at record numbers, as if we’re currently living in a society where a college education guarantees you a lucrative and stable career like it did in the past. I’d love to do some research on how many of these black women are in universities or those for-profit colleges that are a complete scam. If you’re including those in your understanding of how black women are totally able to support a child all on their own, you’re completely ignorant to the reality that all you normally get from those schools is a mountain of debt, making you even less likely to be able to support a family on your own.
When you commit a crime, you no longer have the right to privacy, as criminal history is public record. When you allow yourself to become a public figure, you increase the likelihood that people will do some research on you. That’s not an exclusive “f you” to men, that’s a situation that everyone is faced with. I mean, we take beating women pretty seriously, and no heroic act undoes a past crime. Why do we have the responsibility to say, “Don’t talk about his criminal history,” and how does that relate to wanting people, in general, to help those in danger if at all possible? People are just supposed to overlook his criminal history because he did something else that was good?
And if you truly believed in the right to privacy, why do you sweep the manosphere’s use of register her under the rug, a site which puts female child molesters up alongside feminists who are just a little too vocal for the MRA’s liking?
I’ll tell you that when it happens to me, because I can easily say yes right now, and I can tell you that based on my history of helping people in danger, I’m likely to do whatever I can to help, and even beyond that, my name HAS been dragged through the mud for doing the right thing, and yet I continue to do the right thing regardless. So I can guess the answer is yes, but you won’t be happy with that answer because I didn’t answer it on your terms.
You’r putting the cart before the horse.
Yeah, the dozens of WOC I follow on tumblr who are posting about feminism in general, and as it specifically relates to them, don’t exist. I’m guessing you don’t do much actual research on your enemy because you’re just glossing over and erasing tons of women.
Because if men can’t degrade and dominate women you’re LITERALLY taking away their right at sexual expression. You can’t express yourself sexually as a man WITHOUT humiliating women and crossing the boundaries they set. How dare we ask men to control predatory behavior?
So why did you bring it up?
Actually, the men I’ve dated have never had to suggest it because I always take the check and put my money on the table. I wouldn’t pay for the whole first date, nor would I allow the man to, because it’s not how I roll. I am not responsibile for single handedly making up for other people’s choices by paying for men. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t afford it seeing as how I get less work for being a freelancing woman in a man’s field.
I believe the complaint you’re touching on here are men who put no effort into being “conventionally attractive” feeling that they DESERVE a woman who is, and that all men are owed a super model-esque woman. I don’t care about who you’re attracted to, just don’t act like an entitled jerk about it. And beyond that, the same men who go on and on about deserving an attractive woman get pissed at women for wanting attractive men. Wanting an attractive partner is not the problem here at all.
RE: Jessay
*standing ovation* Well done, madame. Well done.
And as a gay man, I am LOLING over the ‘AIDS is a gay man’s problem.’ Wow, man. Just wow. Put a bow on it, will ya?
Jessay: A 2% decrease is not “really low” and an increase in the country as a whole really doesn’t say much about the ability of law enforcement, to me it more suggests that criminals are spreading out beyond major cities.
Or that there was a period of abnormally high urban crime, which has returned to the baseline (this is one of the conclusions of the papers about lead, to which I linked an article. The evidence seems strong).
That is SO Husband when we first started going out (add a neat suit, long hair and long painted finger nails).
When I announced to people in my family that he was my boyfriend everyone was like (not to his face, but to mine) “but he’s gay, isn’t he?”.
He’s since given up on make-up and nail polish though.
Either way, writing off violent crime because there was a 2% decrease in Philly to focus on the incredibly rare false rape accusation is absolutely ridiculous.
Dvärghundspossen – I have vanquished the WordPress dragon and have finally returned. Primarily to tell you that that’s brilliant! The asshole(tm)* really needs as much meme-time as the Nice Guy.
I might add something like “The Asshole” has also been known to hang out with women even when he knows that there is no possibility of sex. AND he still manages to have a good time. I know, right? Occasionally he meets women through these female friends and maybe something comes of that but that’s not even his primary motivation.
No wonder the MRA’s think he’s an asshole. He’s wasting so much time on all those other parts of the female. /sarcasm.
*Can’t do the tm mark yet. Heck, I’ve only recently figured out how to get wordpress to let me back in.
Thanks Mayimoktoo! But credit to where credit’s due – it was Swedish feminist blogger Tanja Suhinina who first came up with the Asshole (TM) thing.
@mayimoktoo
The trademark symbol (™) should be:
™