Above, the unintentionally ironic MRA meme of the week, courtesy of A Voice for Men’s Facebook page, their main distribution center for unintentionally ironic and otherwise terrible memes. I’m not sure what specific week this is the ironic meme for, given that Emma Watson’s speech to the UN took place last September and this meme was posted on Facebook only this week, but just roll with it, people!
So what exactly makes this meme ironic? Well, for starters, Watson didn’t actually say the words in question or otherwise order men to talk to women about their feelings.
What she said was a good deal more subtle. She started by saying that one of the things that led her to embrace feminism was her realization, at age 18, that “my male friends were unable to express their feelings.” Then she went on to talk in more detail about the ways breaking down gender stereotypes helps to free, well, everyone.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.
If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.
If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
The big irony here? This is exactly what a real Men’s Rights movement should be promoting, not raging against.
Adding to the irony, whoever made this meme made clear that they aren’t just unwilling to listen to women’s feelings; they’re unwilling to listen to a woman’s logical argument. Which is why they simplified her comments and distorted their meaning.
But what wins this meme the grand prize for irony this week is meme maker’s assertion that “WE DON’T NEED OR WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT OUR FEELINGS.”
Really? Because in fact MRA dudes and MGTOWs and the rest of their ilk talk about their feelings constantly, and loudly — with anyone willing to listen and some who aren’t.
Sure, it’s true that most MRA dudes and their ideological soulmates don’t like to talk about their feelings of sadness or anxiety or insecurity or doubt. You know, the sorts of feelings it would be good for most of these guys to explore and understand and, when possible, get past.
But they love, just love, to talk about how angry they are, how angry they think other men are, and how much feminists, and the women of the world generally, are going to suffer if they refuse to listen to angry men and do what they say. Hell, the so-called “father” of Men’s Rights in the UK? A guy who calls himself Angry Harry. (And he more than lives up to the name.)
The cherry on top of this Irony Sundae: the memester’s decision to use a picture of a homeless man to represent a man oppressed by demanding women.
Men don’t become homeless because some evil woman asked them to talk about their feelings. Indeed, given how many homeless people are mentally ill, most homeless men (and women) would benefit from having the opportunity to talk to a trained professional about their feelings and from better mental health services generally. (Not to mention better services for veterans suffering from PTSD and other war-related maladies.)
In the US, many homeless people who are mentally ill were dumped onto the streets by facilities that didn’t have the money to properly care for them; some of the facilities were and are so bad that their former inhabitants actually prefer the streets.
Oh, and one of the main reasons mental health services are so shitty in the US — and why, in particular, so many men are so poorly served? The old-fashioned notion that men “DON’T NEED OR WANT TO TALK … ABOUT OUR FEELINGS.”
So I award AVFM this week’s IRONY AWARD in MEMING, for once again promoting ideas that actually make the world worse for men!
Not only are MRAs incapable of understanding the difference between personal preferences and culturally enforced standards of beauty, they can’t tell the difference between a real and fake person!
I bet at the end of Paranormal Activity *spoiler alert for a five year old movie I guess *
when the demon possesses Katie and kills Micah, they saw it as an example of women abusing and oppressing men. After all, it can’t be a coincidence that she’s named KATIE!!!
While a lot of the time, people who face the issues in the first place are the most qualified to speak about them, this isn’t happening in the manosphere. Not least because the manosphere doesn’t represent all our even most men, just a small handful of incredibly entitled, petulant men.
Further, I kind of do think I can criticize someone who is dealing with problems if their issue is that their house is on fire, and their solution is to blame the water company for somehow setting the blaze, despite the fact that that’s kind of the opposite of what they do and they never had the power to set their house on fire in the first place. And then, when the fire department starts hosing down the place, they shriek bloody murder about how their stuff is getting all wet and what SHOULD happen is we just firebomb everyone ELSE’S house to make things fair instead.
This clause pretty much says it all. Trolly thinks that feminists are required to set their own concerns aside and work tirelessly on men’s issues and men’s rights.
It’s just the same old feeling of entitlement to women and women’s time.
Listen, troll: women are not obligated to deal with your problems for you. Why don’t you go deal with your own problems? Nobody is denying that male suicide is a problem, but there are plenty of things that men can do about it themselves. Why are you going onto feminist forums and demanding that women do all the hard work for you? Go do some hard work for yourself for a change.
In fact, I would be willing to bet money that if a men’s organization were putting together a suicide outreach program, or a homeless housing program, and they reached out to a feminist organization for assistance, the feminists would do everything in their power to assist so long as it didn’t compromise their own mission. They’re not going to shoulder the entire project, but I am positive they would offer, at a minimum, signal boosting and advice on how to make a complicated project come together.
But, y’know, that assumes that a men’s organization is interested in making a difference in the lives of men, which Paul Elam has asserted he is not.
Hey Dawn!
I’m a man. I’ve struggled with suicidal thoughts and depression, with feeling inadequate because I couldn’t get a job that paid well enough to support a family, with the fact that I’ve never been very masculine, with the fact that I don’t enjoy being “aggressive” or “dominant”, and, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I’d like to say…
Fuck you. Fuck you and the fucking horse you rode in on. The MRM has never once fucking come close to addressing any of my problems.
Hey, sunnysombrera. That’s a great list, but I am going to nit pick this a little:
“To not pay for a child he didn’t want IF and ONLY IF he took provably sufficient steps in trying to prevent conception. (IMHO anyway).”
First of all, all birth control methods can fail. Second, while I’m tempted to say that a man shouldn’t have to pay child support in certain clear-cut cases of deception and bad faith (woman stops taking her birth control without telling him, woman gets in-vitro from a sperm bank and then sues for child support), the thing about child support is that it’s not about a woman’s right to get money, it’s about the CHILD’S rights. So it all gets pretty damn ethically murky because as much as I don’t want to screw over men, they can take a hit, as it were, more readily than a child can.
What’s NOT murky is making sure that money paid in child support goes to support the child and nothing else. What I think is also not murky is the idea that those of us not raising children should all help support those who are. Children are not some kind of unnecessary luxury pet, they are the next generation of citizens who will keep the world running. Speaking as a happily childless person, I’d rather pay my share in taxes and see childrearing considered a valued, PAID service to the community.
Oh, and male birth control. Also not murky.
Big hugs, Binjabreel.
Did anyone else see this article in the Economist recently?
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21652323-blue-collar-men-rich-countries-are-trouble-they-must-learn-adapt-weaker-sex
It talks about the problems of men in the first world, who ‘are far more likely than women to be jailed, estranged from their children, or to kill themselves. They earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic maths, reading and science entirely.’
Most of these are, of course, popular talking points in the MRM. But the Economist (a magazine which I disagree with a lot of the time) manages to suggest a whole host of possible solutions to mens’ problems without once blaming feminism or women in general and it acknowledges that men still dominate most positions of power.
Now, I don’t agree with every sentence – I think the Economist should have said more about toxic masculinity, but I have no problem with people having a different approach to me. Like most feminists I love discussing ideas and other viewpoints – just so long as they’re presented in good faith and don’t contain hate speech or harassment.
It would be so easy for a genuine advocate group for men’s issues to help men without any conflict with feminists and indeed such a group would probably get my moral and even financial support, even if their priorities weren’t exactly the same as mine. But instead the MRM spends its time harassing, blaming, whining, accusing and doing pretty much anything other than finding ways to help men.
Dawn:
Where was the MRM when the Canadian government forced the New Veterans Charter on us in 2006, ensuring that all future veterans would get fuck all compared to my generation?
Thats right, no where. We’re suckers until you need someone for a “meme”
Fuck you.
Where was the MRM when the Canadian LGBT community was fighting for the right to marry? Oh thats right, gay and bi men (*waves*) don’t exist. Or if we do, we’re a scapegoat, or *insert 50’s wailing about degeneracy*
Again, fuck you.
Where was the MRM when PTSD was literally killing me and destroying my family? When I considered suicide almost daily?
No where.
Fuck off Dawn, you and your whole movement are a sham, a means to fleece vulnerable people. You have, and will have achieved nothing but to send more men like me to our early graves.
http://m.imgur.com/PyAAPpA
Yeah I’m about to bring out a teal deer. And hugs to you Binjabreel because I’ve dealt with that too.
To ANYONE who claims that feeeeeemales are the ones shaming men when they express emotions, you are full of shit. The only people who’ve ever shamed me or belittled me for expressing my feelings are other men. I have YET to meet a woman who has told me to ‘man up’ or ‘stop being a little bitch’ or said ‘my god, you’re so sensitive’ or ‘just get over it’ or ‘you’re not fun to be around when you’re like this’.
It’s so frustrating because I am very emotional and as a result I grew up constantly thinking I was a failure as a man, than I could never be considered attractive. All because of the bullshit stereotype that men are ‘supposed’ to be unfazed and unemotional. Even now I get really nervous around other guys, I’m scared of being myself. I’m scared of getting laughed at or worse…
@Dawn
Going to a feminist forum and asking ‘but what about all the menz” is NOT ‘expressing your feelings’. You, along with many other dudes, really have a lot to learn when it comes to expressing yourselves.
FOR ALL OF YOU DENSE FUCKING MRAs, HERE ARE SOME EXAMPES OF HOW TO EXPRESS EMOTIONS:
“Hey, dude, last night you said X and that really hurt my feelings because I’ve always worried about Y, why would you say something like that especially after you know what I’ve been through?”
“What’s up, dudebro? You don’t seem happy today? Are you feeling ok?”
“Oh, I dunno man, I guess I’m just kind of bored of doing the same thing everyday and it’s making me feel kind of sad but I don’t know what to do”
“I feel unattractive, I mean I don’t have a six pack and I’m not 6 feet and I’m afraid that I won’t be considered a man. It makes me really insecure and I don’t know what to do, I feel lost.”
“Hi sis, I gotta be honest, I feel like we’re drifting apart and I feel like I’m always putting in the effort to talk. I wish you would give me a call sometime, it would make me happy”
Obviously I’m focusing on ‘negative’ emotions because these are the kinds of things that men keep bottled up inside them.
Yes, lots of men express their emotions ‘their own way’ by throwing a temper tantrum or raging. This is inappropriate, and not a healthy way of expressing emotions; it’s also what makes this AVFM meme so goddamn ironic. There is no ‘male’ version of emotional expression. It’s just that a lot of men never learned to express their emotions and those who did were actively shamed by their peers. Allowing men to express their emotions does not mean inappropriate outbursts of entitlement and rage suddenly become acceptable.
“I’M SO MAD THAT OTHER WOMEN ARE GETTING MORE SEX THAN I AM” is not an ’emotional expression’, it’s a defense mechanism based on entitlement and a blatant lack of awareness for others. In fact, those kind of outbursts are likely a result of men not knowing how to express their emotions.
Hugs to Moocow, dudeinthewoods and Binjabreel.
@LG
I was expecting some people to ‘nitpick’, as you say, at that point, which is why I put the IMHO addendum at the end. However, any reasoned argument with that point is welcome – and yours is certainly reasonable. I think I’ll reconsider my stance.
The Toronto protest happened over two years ago, MRAs should feel free to stop fixating on it. I know you won’t, but I’m throwing that out there anyway.
Seconding Sunnysombrera hugs to all of you and to all men who are similar.
Thank you Sunnysombrera and Fruitloopsie! I’m happier now than I ever was and I have zero care in the world for the ‘approval’ of toxic individuals.
BTW Fruitloopsie your avatar is awesome! I love Fantasia!
Some great comments here. I should add for balance, after my anti -Fabius Maximus rant (we have been crossing swords for nearly a decade now) the lots of really great men I have met as well.
Again, men only spaces, lots of grog and the truth comes out. Yes there are the ranters, blamers and the closet misogynsists.
Bit there are also really nice guys, though some stuggle to express it because of ther conditioning. Sometimes they can only do it when they are blind drunk. Good hearts, warm, caring, worried about the world and (if they have them) their children. Really love their partners. The most common statement I have heard from men like that is “my best friend”, my “soulmate”.
Hearing some of them (again usually only drunk) worrying about their wives who have serious health problems could break your heart sometimes. When they pour it out,, after being ‘strong’ and so on. But inside they are dying. “I just wish it was me suffering, she doesn’t deserve it” is not an uncommon statement.
There are those who have broken their restrictive programming, some never do entirely but manage to weaken it.
Maybe we should call feminism, ‘humanism’. Because there are no losers in this in the freedom to be yourself and free from expected roles of behaviour, man or woman, boy or girl. Just be a good human being..
I have noticed somthing of all the couples I know, cis hetero males/famales, cis gay males, cis lesbian females, trans and…well whatever….it is complex…the ones that make it, the ones that are happy together…are just good human beings first and foremost.
Feminists are like…”Men should talk about their feelings”…”Muahahha your male tears sustain me”…
Well, preferably men should talk about their feelings to their friends, family, therapist or loved ones, not strangers on the internet. Women should too. I think that’s a fairly reasonable suggestion, don’t you?
@drive-by threadshitter
Well somebody didn’t read the post where I already answered that.
Here, I’ll make it easy on you and just quote myself:
Of course he didn’t read the comments, SFHC. It might pop his bubble.
*ahem*, to elaborate further on what SFHC said:
When men cry about how women have more agency than men think they should, about how women are being more involved with media, about how women are asking to be not treated like pretty background decoration or not to be fridged to further a man’s story in media, etc. those are “male tears”, and those are mocked.
When men cry about losing a family member, depression, abuse, divorce, ect. Those are legit feelings, and we’d be more than happy to offer a shoulder for those men to cry on.
“Women aren’t acting the way I want them to and personally approve of!” vs. Actual, legit feelings.
Apples vs. Galapagos giant tortoises, as it were.
The reason why we mock the “male tears” is because those tears are falling because women aren’t acting/speaking in accordance with bullshit sexist “rules” laid out by men.
“Male tears” come when women are defying gender roles and doing things that are good for women as a whole. The only way that men think that “male tears” will stop is if women go back to being pretty housewives who dispense blowjobs, steaks, and sex at the order of a man, and spend the rest of their time caring for that man’s spawn while he goes off and gets to have all of his male power fantasies come to life with no consequence.
In other words, they’d only stop at the expense of women while men have no consequences (outside of this fantasy culture being fucking toxic as hell). And that’s a no-fucking-go.
I have a better idea. We should call feminism “feminism” because the focus is on women’s issues. Because overall, on average, women end up with a worse deal in this world than men do. And, even if women didn’t generally have it worse than men, there still wouldn’t be anything wrong with advocacy focusing specifically on women’s issues. Just like there’s nothing wrong in principle with advocacy which focuses on men’s issues.
This bullshit of “let’s call it humanism” is … well, it’s bullshit. It’s “let’s call it something gender neutral so we can include men in it and thus make it worth giving a shit about”. So much nope. In fact, all of the nope. All of it.
Also: isn’t it interesting how using gender neutral terminology is too much to ask of people when it’s women being excluded from spaces that purport to be inclusive, but when men feel excluded suddenly we need gender neutral names even for things that are actually gender specific?
I’ve got an idea: Let’s call it feminism in order to have some historical continuity with the movement which gave us all these fucking ideas to begin with. Even if it has now broadened to a more intersectional approach and incorporated ideas from the struggle against racism and homophobia, it’s still the same movement.
Anyone who says we shouldn’t call it feminism is saying that we should distance ourselves from Simone de Beauvoir and Mary Wollstonecraft; and at that point I stop taking that person seriously.
The main problem with calling it “Humanism” or “Egalitarianism” or whatever… Most people (not you, Lisa, but I’d say 90% of the rest) who suggest that only suggest it because they want to remove the feminist issues from feminism. “Humanism” and “Egalitarianism” are just more dog whistles for “What about teh menz” these days.
Yeah, got to agree. When I see someone say it should be “humanism” or “egalitarianism” it sets off warning bells, those words are sadly tainted by the many attempts to use them to get feminists to shut up about women’s issues. I’m sure Lisa didn’t intend it that way though, but yeah, there doesn’t need to be an alternative word for feminism (in my opinion).
To add to the male tears thing, I would say it’s also about when men interrupt women talking about serious problems to talk about their petty problems.
When women talk about rape and men butt in to talk about being turned down for a date. For example.
It also applies when women are talking about systemic misogyny such as women’s entire worth being judged entirely on how boner pleasing we are and a man barges in to talk about a personal problem like how he sometimes feels insecure about his looks.
It’s all about context. It’s not like I was laughing at my dad and saying “lol male tears!” when his fiancée died, you know?