Ooh, scary!
Men’s Rights activists have discovered something that Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps and the rest of his gang at the Westboro Baptist Church learned a long time ago: outrageously offensive signs can mean media coverage.
Canadian MRAs associated with A Voice for Men recently got attention in Edmonton for posters mocking a date rape awareness campaign. Now some of their compatriots have captured the attention of the media with posters in Saskatoon.
This time the MRAs toned down the offensiveness in favor of simple outrageousness, combined with a healthy dose of incomprehensibility. The most incomprehensible of the current lot is probably this one, which comes straight from the A Voice for Men poster page:
But my favorite is this one:
I was originally going to write a sort of rebuttal to this, pointing out that by most measures Canada is, generally speaking, a rather unfrightening place for men (and women), what with its high standard of living, decent health care, relatively low crime rate, and so on.
I mean, if I were to pick a frightening country to live in, as a man (or a woman), I would probably pick someplace like, you know, Somalia, North Korea, Sudan or South Sudan, someplace like that. Syria’s probably not a great place to visit at the moment either.
But then I was thinking: Canada’s main problem, in terms of its international reputation, is that people tend to think of it as boring, not frightening.
Maybe Canada should embrace the whole “most frightening place to be a man” thing, and take advantage of this silly quote from Erin Pizzy to promote itself as scary, edgy, intense, EXTREEEEEMMME!
Maybe with some posters like the one at the top of this post?
I don’t know. I’m not that great at photoshop. Perhaps some of you would like to have a go at it? I know we’ve got some talented MRA poster-parodists here.
I kind of liked the Houseplants of Gor parody. Maybe it’s just that I find the defiant, talking plant to be a hilarious idea. It makes me imagine working out in my flower bed and having a tulip lean over and say, “You know, you’re kind of an asshole.”
Sittiekitty: The porn laws in Canada are inconsistently applied. One of the comic shops I grew up with had an adult section, although you never knew which comics would get confiscated at the border, and which shipments would make it through.
I had one (PG, mild nudity) comic series that was missing a single issue for years. Turns out that one issue had an explicit sex scene in it, and kept getting confiscated at the border, even while other materials which were far more illegal (i.e. representations of bondage) were still making it to the comic shop shelves.
RE: sarahlizhousespouse
I love Houseplants of Gor. It makes me happy.
RE: leftwingfox
I am so not surprised by this. Obscenity has always been a subjective thing. I find de Sade utterly repulsive, along with most other ‘classic’ kink literature. Our family was dubious about us reading Spider Robinson, but Piers Anthony was totally okay. Go figure.
RE: leftwingfox
Was that comic series Elfquest, by any chance?
No, it was called “Katmandu”, a furry romance comic by the “Shanda the Panda” folks. Not even going to try and justify it now, aside from the fact that it was very well drawn. It probably deserved criticism from every axis of the kyriarchy.
Re Fibinachi’s comfort corps analysis: In Gor women were people. There is a story where there are dominant women. They can still be enslaved, even tamed, but they are terrifying because they could undermine the basic premise of the “woman are good for nothing but slaves”.
re Canadian porn laws: some of those are (IMO) problematic, because they rely on the intent of the reader. Is Lolita porn? Nabokov certainly wasn’t writing it to encourage arousal, though some use it that way
Falconer: AFAIK, Western isn’t so different from English except in how you hold the reins.
It’s a lot different.
I far prefer english. Setting aside (for the moment) what the difference tack does in terms of communication, the seat is different, the aids (cues you give the horse) are different. The way you manage the gaits (walk, trot, canter, gallop) are different.
Some of it is subtle; you can stand in the stirrups a little more easily in a western rig, some of it is massive (western riders sit the trot).
I find english to be a lot easier, the saddles are more comfortable to my bony ass, and I can better feel the muscle movements of the horse. Jumping is easier (and safer, the horn can gut kill you), trotting more comfortable, and galloping so much less tiring on the horse (lighter tack).
re stallions and mares: A well managed stallion is not any harder to ride than a gelding. The problem is we don’t manage them well. With stud fees in the tens of thousands of dollars (for a mediocre stud, it can climb to millions) people are leery of letting the stallion out with mares; because mares won’t put up with his shit, and he might get hurt.
So they only let the stallions near mares when the mares are in heat, or worse; they don’t let them use real mares at all, and have them fuck the horse equivalent of a blow-up doll (often finished off by hand).
Which means they have a PUA attitude to mares. A stallion which is pastured with mares, tends to be a lot more mellow, and no harder to ride than a bossy mare, or a headstrong gelding.
And they have glossier coats, prettier manes/tails and more endurance.
Which means, I suppose,, turning studs out to common pasture = misandry. (I have friends who are keeping a stud/mare combo, of Percherons. He’s a sweetheart. The baby is HUGE!
Does your bony ass need a cushion? I seem to be at ikea weekly currently, so I could totally grab you one. [insert evil grin here]
pecunium – gods, yes, I’ve read some horror stories over the years about Thoroughbred stallions here (Sir Tristram comes to mind) who were so fucked up they couldn’t be allowed loose near mares. They’d be trying to hurt them during the mating, and were no safer around humans. It was like the description in a book called The Noble Horse: “Mating becomes just a mechanical process, and the wedding with all its ceremonial has become a rape …” They have, I think, a slightly romantic view of the process of mating in the wild, but a very good point about how bad can be in studs.
Well, I said I wasn’t very good at it.
I should have remembered the horn on the saddle, though. The idea of roping a cow and having it go wrong, with the horse going over on top of me, is pretty scary.
Falconer: It’s not going wrong when roping, it’s going wrong at all. It’s rigid, your belly isn’t. You might wan’t (should you ever go riding again) to look into Aussie Stock saddles or (though they look scary) a McClellan Cavalry saddle.
That reminds me of one story about how William the Conqueror died – a rupture following being thrown onto the pommel of his saddle.
In, “Up From the Plains” John McPhee recounts a tale of Wyoming, ca. 1910 where a cowboy needs to have his gut stitched up because he had been slashed open by a saddle horn.
I’m guessing it was the stitching (rawhide) ripping into him.
Yeah, you would’t think of a Western-style saddle’s pommel being high enough to do the damage just from its shape.
My BIL just lent me a bunch of John McPhee books; he’s a huge fan, and thought I’d like him. Synchronicity!
John McPhee is great! I remember an Atlantic coming in when I was in Iraq and it had a McPhee article… I savored it (it was about long haul trucking; focusing on a guy who hauled hazmat liquids).
That’s what BIL says! He’s always trying to get me to read more non-fiction, and I try to get him to read more fiction. I have the two John McPhee Readers, Coming into the Country, and Assembling California.
I doubt I’ll ever have the money to go riding again. And even if I do, if I go riding often enough to justify buying my own saddle.
But thanks for the advice!
Cloudiah: Assembling Calif. is part of his magnum opus on geology, Annals of the Former Age. The Control of Nature is really good too. Heck, all of it is.