Anyone who reads the Men’s Rights subreddit on a regular basis knows that when you see the username DavidByron2 you are in for a treat. Well, a “treat” in the sense that discovering a flaming bag of dog poop on your doorstop is a “treat.” Like many Men’s Rightsers, he’s both smug and ignorant, a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
But somehow he manages to be more than just another insufferable mansplaining rage-baby who spends all of his spare time ranting about a subject — feminism — he knows less than nothing about. No, there’s a kind of daft genius to his comments; I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
And so I thought I’d wind up this week with a small collection of the best –that is, worst — comments he left in the Men’s Rights subreddit this week. In choosing the top 5, I have confined myself mostly to those that got more upvotes than downvotes, because, seriously, the thought that there are actual human beings out there upvoting this crap is almost as amazing as the fact that there’s an actual human being posting it. And thinking himself quite clever and righteous for doing so.
Let’s work our way to the top starting with …
5) Getting cat-called is a form of power women have over men:
4) One MRA can fend off twenty feminists with his superior LOGICKING:
3) Society is bizarrely fixated on punishing rape to an unhealthy degree:
2) Feminism has to steal legitimacy from the struggles of truly disadvantaged groups because women don’t have any real issues:
1) But DavidByron2’s masterpiece this week was his argument that if women are really as scared of men as the feminists (allegedly) say they are, then they should probably be banned from doing pretty much everything.
Dunning, Kruger, meet DavidByron2.
Hi Athywren!
I think DavidByron is the one who calls himself a socialist too, though he might be of the proud Stalinist variety.
Makes you wonder how they treat boys irl, doesn’t it?
There’s so much wrong here. Where does one start?
Is that bloodthirsty otter in the picture up top JohntheOtter?
@lea Ah thanks, but the internet should be awarded to zoon echo; I was merely cackling at his/her turn of phrase in the comment above.
Wtf was that nonsense I just read?
If he thinks women should (and secretly do) take cat-calling and barking as compliments, does he think that we should (or probably do) take rape as just some ultimate type of flattery?
I think Toolbox meant he was bemused at the defenders of cat-calling, the ones who insist that it’s just a compliment, and using his personal experience with and knowledge of cat-callers to contest that claim, and confirm that no, it really is all about the misogyny.
Okay, sorry if I overreacted. It sounded ‘splainy to me, like, Did you know that street harassers aren’t actually trying to pay you a compliment?
@Lea:
Thanks very much for the good ideas. The impact on my mum, my kitty, and my nieces is enough to force me to think about my actions, and hopefully remember before another potentially violent situation arises. Afraid I’ll have to dance out my rage though – running is my number one asthma trigger. Maybe that’s part of the fear reaction – knowing that I probably can’t run away from trouble is likely part of my problem, too.
And I’ve just realised a huge difference between us good, upright feminists and the MRAssholes, illustrated perfectly here. A feminist has the self-awareness to recognise a possible problem with aggression, know that this is a problem, and asks other feminists for advice, which is received and appreciated. Reverse the genders and post it on an MRA forum. We all know what happens next.
So… Al Jazeera just interviewed AVfM’s Robert O’Hara, who assures us he can’t possibly hate women because he loves his mother, and the whole thing is full of fail. But I just found this hilarious comment by “ZaW Edghr” on the article, and thought I should share:
Someone needs to stage this powerful new drama!
Emmy Rae: Oh, I get it. Frankly, ‘bemusement’ at some of this shit is, itself, a form of male privilege. As a dude, I can afford to just tilt my head with my best “What the ever-loving fuck?” expression when I hear something like this, because hey, at the end of the day, the guys saying/doing this crap aren’t actually affecting me directly. It took me awhile to realize that for women, the same sorts of excuse-making that we see from MRAs is, in itself, a fresh manifestation of misogyny (that is, it’s a second attack in its own right, as opposed to just an attempt to re-cast the original incident in a benign light).
The article itself is quite enlightening:
___
Q: What’s the men’s rights movement’s position on rape?
A: False accusations of rape are a serious issue that the men’s rights movement deals with. It’s one of our top issues.
Rape is one of those things… We hear all these silly lies: there’s a rapist behind every corner; all men are potential rapists. Common things you hear over and over again coming out of the mouths of feminists. And the inflated rape statistics, this idea that one in four women in college are going to raped before they graduate, you hear this all the time, it’s just not true. It’s not true.
That’s not to say that sexual assault doesn’t happen. Of course it does. But men who rape because they’re rapists, they rape because they’re criminals, not because they’re men.
___
So, the MRA’s position on rape is….??
(I’m afeard of the blockquote monster, didn’t risk it.)
sorry, that was @cloudiah
thanks, @freemage
I kinda WISH I had more fight reflex when I get creeped on. (There’s this one deaf dude we call Creepy Tim who keeps grabbing us, trying to get us to let him into our apartment and give us his phone number, and how convenient, his deafness means he can conveniently “misunderstand” any body language!) Unfortunately, my reaction is usually to turn into frightened meat and run away.
Also, he’s just sporadic enough that I’m ALWAYS taken by surprise, which makes the reaction worse.
That #1 comment… what a moron. I’ve been where I had to live with that kind of fear. It was in the situation he’d probably call “the most manly of all”: as combatant in a war zone.
Oddly, if you bring up the ways in which being in Iraq, where who was going to try to kill you was a pressing concern; and there was no good way to tell (until they tried) and that you knew the number of people who were going to try was ridiculously small; and how that parallel applies to things like sexual assault… you get called unstable.
You get told, “that sort of thinking is alright for Baghdad, but to think about anything else like that sounds like serious PTSD, you should check into a hospital”.
At which point I have to get all sorts of anylytic on their ass, because they start to bob-and-weave about insulting a soldier, esp. a male soldier.
Assessing risk isn’t crippling. Being unable to assess it is.
The times I have been harasssed on the street… I can’t say as I felt powerful. Mostly I’m deciding whether or not it’s 1: likely to lead to a fight and 2: if the situation is worth the hassle of letting it get that far.
A couple of weeks ago when there were three guys coming toward me, and I felt something strange as they passed… I realised one of them was trying to lift my kilt.
So I turned and called him an abusive fuck. I do know that my sense of concern about retribution wasn’t great. It was a crowded street, and I’m male.
But… do you think that they were comfortable enough to try it on a crowded street made me feel “powerful” because he wanted to see if he could shame/embarrass me (it’s also possible he wanted to get a better look at my ass… fine dude, if that’s what you want, ask).
The reason they are afraid of “false reports” is becuase most reports aren’t false. By pretending false reporting is a scourge they get to discredit the overwhelming instances of actual abuse.
Cloudiah: That same comments section has the usual link to Christina Hoff-Summers’ colossal failure to comprehend why a definitional study of rape (as opposed to straight-up asking ‘Have you ever been raped?’ and calling it a day) was needed in the first place. I swear, they need a new playbook
@LBT:
Want to pool our aggression and split the difference?
And while you’re at it, you can ship Creepy Tim to my building, where us gals in a kinda rough neighbourhood take zero shit in our territory. I’d bet money that my landlady’d have his testes in a jar in her kitchen inside of a week…
“Assessing risk isn’t crippling. Being unable to assess it is.”
Someone needlepoint that on a pillow?
Pecunium, did you get mistaken for a girl again? Can we trade the “ability to be mistaken for ones non-biological sex” skill?
Well of course we all know that all these mean little bitches are the REAL sexists, right? Because we all know these broads are so irrational and emotional that they just can’t handle those PMSey emotions, amiright fellas? Now aren’t you emotional little girls happy that daddy is hear to explain how the world really works? I bet you really appreciate being set straight here because, you know, now you can listen to the adult in the room and not have to worry about your lady problems. You know the ones I’m talking about. Your lady bits just make you so irrational that you can’t possibly know anything about how the world really works. Good thing you have a big strong smart man with his sensibility and logic to set you straight. Now aren’t you grateful? Because as we all know… Bitches be crazy, amiright guys? Heeeyyyooooo!!
And how about those woman drivers? Bitches be swervin’! Amiright?! Heeeeyyyooooo!!
We all know that all women want to castrate all men with meat cleavers and wash their hands in the blood! They’re evil! EVIL! OPPRESSION! OPPRESSION OF WHITE MEN, I SAY!
And then there’s the indisputable fact that all white men are being kept down by the bootheel of you big bad scary women! Oh, when will white men catch a break? When will you big scary feminists stop trying to ruin their fun?! There are women making them feel like rapists, minorities making them feel like bigots, and liberals trying to tell them not to be such a dick about stuff! Sounds like oppression to me! Why, oh why can’t white men stop being attacked on all sides for good reason?
Why can’t white men just do whatever they want without having to be called out every time they do something wrong? And it’s all white men I’m talking about, obviously. Because if you tell one he’s being a dickhead it means you’re attacking all of them! And if you tell one he’s being sexist or misogynistic you’re mercilessly attacking all men! So YOU’RE the bigots! Right guys? You know what I mean! Bitches be crazy, yo! Amiright fellas? Amiright?
Argenti: No. I’m pretty sure they knew I was male. At a guess it was, “let’s play with the straight dude” as I was at the edge of The Village and my gaydar was pinging.
What amuses me personally about DB2’s last comment is the fact that its premise betrays a complete lack of understanding of how panic attacks and anxiety disorders work. I have a fairly bad anxiety disorder and I’ve had panic attacks in public. You generally don’t “run off and get injured”. Though in its severest form, anxiety disorders can render you incapable of holding a job, many, many people live and work with them. If you met me at work you’d never know I’m always on the verge of panic.
Also, it hardly needs to be mentioned that fear and panic are two very different things. Given his hyperbolic writing style I’m not surprised the distinction was glossed over.
I’d go for a new playpen, m’self. With really high sides.
So, as the resident unattractive older invisible lady who used to be a younger visible lady, I gotta say these are two sides of the same coin — not complete opposites. Whether a dude is pretending to listen to me because he wants to stare at my boobs or pretending to ignore me while I’m waiting in the store that employs him because I’m not doing anything for his boner, it still adds up to him not exactly treating me as a person. And after several decades of being treated as not exactly a person — whose opinions matter, who is occasionally right on certain topics, who … I dunno, is a paying and tipping customer — whatever — not by everyone, by any means, but by enough people, I’m fucking sick of it.
So, power ain’t what’s going on here. OBVIOUSLY. (To everyone except, well, misogynists.)
Also, I feel kind of bad for DavidByron1 and DavidBryon3. Not all DavidByrons are like that!
Well, at least he’s polite to the power hungry man-hating straw feminists he’s conjured up with his imagination.
I don’t think MRAs rolled for Intelligence. They put all those points into Willpower.