I spend more time on YouTube than I probably should. Most of the time I’m on the site, I’m tracking down strange and awesome music videos. But I also love cat videos (big surprise), ridiculous fake alien and UFO videos, videos of people behaving in incredibly unwise ways that are somehow not lethal to them, and pretty much anything that’s got Yackety Sax as its soundtrack.
What do MRAs enjoy watching? As far as I can tell, when they’re not watching videos of other MRAs, or flooding the comments of feminist videos, they like watching videos of women getting punched.
How else to explain the hundred-plus upvotes that greeted this brief video – it’s all of 15 seconds long –of a man knocking out a woman who was assaulting him. The video starts with a fight already in progress, as a woman rains blows on a much larger man backed up against a wall at what seems to be a strip mall while her friends shriek in the background. The man, after fending off a number of punches, hits her directly in the face and she drops to the ground.
That’s it. That’s all we know. We don’t know who these people are, what the fight was about, or even who started it.
But to the denizens of the Men’s Rights subreddit, this is a man who is fully justified in using violence against a woman, and they can barely conceal their excitement, posting dozens of comments proclaiming him a sort of Men’s Rights hero.
“Kudos to the guy who stood up to this bullshit,” dalsgaard declares, in a comment that gets dozens of upvotes. “I hope other men will take his example.”
Tim8080 only wishes he’d been there to take part in the punching:
Actually, the man in question isn’t particularly old, and he’s certainly not frail; he’s actually rather large and imposing.
Gus2144 thinks that for some reason gender equality necessarily involves a lot of hitting:
Evidently in that last comment Gus took it a little too far for his Men’s Rights bretheren, and he garnered himself a few downvotes.
But the serious downvoting in the thread was reserved for those who questioned whether or not MRAs should be celebrating the incident captured on video as a grand victory for Men’s Rights.
Indeed, CapnDancyPants won himself more than two dozen downvotes for simply wondering what might have happened before the fifteen seconds shown on the video:
MRAs: If they can’t punch women, they don’t want to be a part of your revolution.
That wasn’t overexplaining, BigMomma.
Nice bit of MRA Math in the Spearhead article comments: “It says she has a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old and is 19…so, she gave birth at 13???”
@spleenybaggage, i saw that too!
That means she had sex when she was 10, obviously.
LOL but of course! 4 + 2 = 6, so she must have given birth six years ago … yeah, and these morons want credit for everything actual intelligent men have done.
@BigMomma
It is good that you are there “to keep an eye on him” although that is a sucky position to be in. And you are so right as to things looking differently after you get more information and things develop.
It is possible that he wasn’t abusive before the move and losing his brother. Both sound pretty traumatic and could have pushed him toward being an abuser. I think the Salon article said that abuse had “accomplices” and “catalysts.” He may have needed those things to become an abuser. Not remotely an acceptable response, obviously.
Best wishes for the ex, and for you.
These men simply want to beat women with impunity.
And I don’t think you were overexplaining. If we can’t share problems with each other, then we aren’t really much of a community. 🙂
oh Kitteh, that is too funny. When I read the comment, my brain did a fart about the maths and then I moved on. But now it all makes sense…
thanks Some Gal, I have some empathy for him because I can see he has had to deal with some shit. But I can’t empathise with his behaviour and the decisions that he made to be unfaithful.
It was the only thing I could think of to explain it! 😀
If you want really funny, have a look at Sparky’s kibble dance in the video I posted in the Shampoo thread. Never seen a corgi do that!
LOL at the MRA math. Next year, when her kids are 3 and 5, and she’s 20, she will have given birth at 12. Then next year, kids are 4 and 6, she’s 21, she will have given birth at 11. In 12 years, the math will prove conclusively that she gave birth while being birthed! A medical miracle!
MRA math is fun! Only men can do it right apparently.
Shiraz I worded that pretty badly I meant that there is an idea in society that men don’t hit women not that there are lots of women beating men, that can be seen in pop culture stuff like the james bond example you mentioned and at least in my experience in real life I remember being told as a kid that boys shouldn’t hit girls and I have heard people talking about a woman who annoyed them that they would have hit her if she was a man. I don’t think this is a real thing there probably are some men who would never hit a woman but in reality a lot of men do and I think that most men who talk about how they would have hit a woman if she were a man are probably just playing out their hero fantasy and in the exact same situation with a man they wouldn’t do anything. I think that mras have bought into this myth and gone into their imagination land where women can beat men and men can’t retaliate they get really angry about this imaginary injustice and punching women becomes a way to fight for equality.
That video is only somewhat appropriate, but I couldn’t find Leslie Knope saying “Math is hard.” 🙁 Oh, well. Close enough and this clip is what got me into the show in the first place.
shampoo thread?
@John-H
I think I understand what you are saying. Basically, society believes that the rule “don’t hit women” is followed far more often than it actually is. This minimizes male-on-female domestic violence.
(Female-on-male domestic violence is minimized by the idea that women are weak and can’t hurt men, which is why you aren’t allowed to hit women and we are back at the minimization of male-on-female dv. And on and on. IBTP.)
Are there a lot of new people here for this post? I see a lot of unfamiliar names commenting. If so, welcome! Good to have you here. 🙂
@BigMomma
http://manboobz.com/2013/02/26/shampoo-away-the-grey-with-just-for-mens-rights-activists/comment-page-3/#comment-264725
That shampoo thread. 🙂
@The Kittehs’
That is exactly how I’ve been thinking of that thread.
ah, sorry forgot about that one. I try to keep up but don’t read all the threads if I’ve been away for a day or so. Right off to have a look
Yeah Some Gal that’s what I was trying to say and you said it much better than I could have.
The reason I mentioned false rape accusations in my first comment is that they are both ideas that already exist and are clearly wrong but mras have fetishized the fuck out of them so that when they write it sounds like they live in an alternate reality where women can do whatever they want knowing that men can’t hit them, and men live in constant fear of being accused of rape for being in the same room as a woman.
O/T but this was linked to at the end of one of the other cat videos:
I’m a sucker for cats trying to play with babies.
Kitten wants to be fierce but it’s a bit dangerous! 😀
The mythologizing over on the Spearhead is kind of fascinating. There aren’t many of the kind of details they harp on in the actual article, but WTF Price and his fellow Shitlocks apparently deduced from thin air that:
* Maggie’s husband sends her half of his take-home pay
* Some of that pay was used for the TV shown (you got your classism in my misogyny!)
* Maggie was courted by dozens of “betas” before she settled on Shane, the convict
* 19 – 4 = 13
* Maggie is a sex worker
* Maggie initiated the physical violence
They also have trouble understanding the ways in which children and adults might find themselves in competition, indicating that, besides not understanding the rest of reality, they don’t know much about either children or adults.
Ex husband, rather.
PS
@WordSpinner
This is Manboobz. Cat videos (and other cuddly critters) are never off-topic!
That baby looks so happy that the kitten reacts! And the kitty seems surprised babies move… I can only conclude that babies are smarter than kittens. (Don’t tell my cat, I want to sleep tonight.) 🙂