Like your arse, men’s rights are massive right now. Of course, this has been “a thing” since the Fathers4Justice superheroes first scaled a public building, reiterating in one fell swoop that irresponsible, life-endangering behaviour and silly costumes are not only newspaper-friendly, but are also not qualities many women look for in a potential birthing partner. Then we had Tom Martin suing the London School of Economics’ gender studies programme for sexism, one of his complaints being that the chairs they sat on were too hard and not suitable for the comfortable positioning of his goolies. Poor Tom.
…
A Voice for Men is essentially the EDL [that is, the Islamophobic English Defence League –DF] of the mens’ rights movement, positing as it does such statements as “a single mother is a woman who in most cases chose to have, or to raise a child without a father. This demonstrates terrible, selfish values”, and “fake boobs are a sexual advertisement. If your wife or GF wants them that means she’s seeking to attract heightened male attention.” It’s extremist, bitter, and encourages men to “not get fucked” by taping every conversation that they have with a woman, like a troop of paranoid angry, ninja spies.
Naturally, MRAs are up in arms about this horribly unfair completely accurate (and if anything rather understated) description of their “movement.” I added some thoughts of my own to the discussion on Reddit here. Here’s one of the responses:
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: On the Men’s Rights subreddit, the battle rages on, but alas I can contribute no more, having just been banned from there, apparently for mentioning The Spearhead too many times, or something. Separate post on that in a second. But in the meantime, here’s my favorite comment from the whole thread, from someone who apparently didn’t enjoy the New Statesman piece as much as I did:
If anyone knows of any sorority newsletter that reads like that New Statesman piece, please let me know, as I would like to subscribe to that newsletter and/or join that sorority, if my status as a mangina qualifies me for membership.
In the meantime, I have added The Vagenda, the online home of Rhiannon and Holly, the authors of the NS piece, to the “Antidotes to Boobery” sidebar.
So our dear friend Fidelbogen, self-declared Counter-Feminist Agent of Change and the wannabe philosopher-king of the Men’s Rights movement, has written an exceedingly dull and verbose post for A Voice for Men rehashing the whole Agent-Orange-RadFemHub-thing. Now, it’s a lovely, slightly too-hot Sunday afternoon here at Man Boobz headquarters, so naturally I didn’t do much more than lightly skim the whole thing. But I did notice this interesting little “argument” part way through.
Apparently Fidelbogen has concluded that it’s perfectly fine for critics of feminism to completely ignore the ideas of most feminists and focus only on the dogmas of the most radical of RadFems:
We should lay to rest the silly notion that such feminists as these are only “fringe radicals” or “extremists”, and that we mustn’t judge the entire movement by them. My question is, why shouldn’t we judge the entire movement by them? Compared to them, what do the moderate feminists really add up to? Anything much? What does a heap of feathers amount to, compared to a cannon ball? What really fuels feminism, anyway? Is it driven relentlessly forward by mellowness and grooviness — by fun, fluffy, happy feelings? Or does it run, let us say, on pure hate, pure spite, pure malevolence, pure malignancy? Well, you get the idea: darker emotions?
That weird choice of alternatives at the end is pretty much a textbook example of a “false dichotomy.” You would think that someone with a brain as big as Fidelbogen’s would be able to recognize and avoid such an elementary logical fallacy.
Fidelbogen continues:
Say what you will, but I am partial to the old maxim that happy people don’t make history. And which is more, I’ve got some experience with feminists; I have studied them, as chaps like me will do, and I have logged a few years in this trade. And I can attest that feminists are all alike. Monolithic, you might say. They vary in superficialities, but under all those sheathing layers lies the high-conductive cable core on which the feminist message travels. It is the same message every time. Every feminist I have ever personally encountered, or been informed of, differs from the radfems we are now studying only in the strength of the underlying signal. One way or another, let them veil it ever so artfully, the message never skips a beat: “Men are the problem. . . men are the problem . . . men are the problem.”
Watch out for the Misandry Bears and their giant Misandry Teeth.
You may recall a post I did the other day about Roger Ebert’s recent claim that women are superior to men. You may also recall that my basic thesis was that Ebert was completely wrong. Heck, you didn’t even have to read my post to see what my stance was; I made it clear in the title itself, which started off with the words “no, women aren’t better than men.”
Well, apparently my saying explicitly that women are not superior to men, and approvingly quoting another feminist saying the same thing, was too much to handle for the proprietor of an exciting new blog chronicling how wrong and bad I and my commetariat are. Mikhael Varpole of the imaginatively named Anti-Man Boobz blog (motto: “Exposing Man Boobz as a vile hate cult”) wrote about Ebert’s claim, and my response, in a recent post.
Here’s what he wrote:
Naturally, Futrelle and the boob gallery had to get in on the action. To his credit, Futrelle doesn’t condone Ebert’s misandry- but then again Dave’s always been a sneaky one that way. He won’t stand in solidarity with Ebert- but note that he’s happy to spin an instance of bold-faced misandry into an opportunity to bash MRAs who are righteously angry, ultimately concluding:
Guys, I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re sort of making it look like Ebert might have a point.
Remember what I said about subtle bigotry? This is a prime example. Misandry and misandric attitudes are dismissed in our culture because the concept itself is seen as illegitimate. And by portraying AVfM’s righteous anger as childish and “proving Ebert’s point”, Futrelle is knowingly and consciously destroying the legitimacy of misandry as a concept. It’s psychological manipulation on a global scale, and it’s downright sinister. And Futrelle, along with his lickspittle toadies, are happily contributing to the anti-male conspiracy.
Yes, explicitly stating that women aren’t superior to men is an exceedingly subtle form of misandry indeed.
Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten what the allegedly “righteous” anger of the AVFM crowd looks like, here’s are a couple of excerpts from the angry screeds I quoted from in my post:
Feminism has provided today’s pampered princesses with the privilege-stuffed, consequence-free Nirvana that they believe they’re entitled to. Do you really think they can be swayed with reason and logic?
And:
[E]verything on this earth from the knickers these women wear on their fat buts, all the way through to just about every single thing they touch in their day, up to and including homes, buildings, cars, trains, rockets, and the food they stuff down their throats, has all been either invented or produced by those useless ‘less than’ human, men.
That doesn’t sound so much like “subtle bigotry” as “just straight-up bigotry.” This is anger of an exceedingly un-righteous kind.
Well, after receiving some gentle mockery at the hands of the Man Boobz commetariat – sorry, at the hands of my “lickspittle toadies” – Varpole posted a comment here trying to clarify his stance.
I disdain commenting here for obvious reasons, but I have to clarify that subtle or “benign” misandry can be as damaging as overt bigotry- moreso, even, because it’s harder to call out. Radfem-level misandry can usually be dismissed (usually). But less overt displays of male-hatred are very difficult, because the concept has no veracity in a misandric, male-hating, anti-man culture. A culture, by the way, that MEN set up, and MEN continue to run, at both the low and high levels.
Well, this is an interesting thesis. Men – sorry, MEN – created the world as we know it, and run things – and yet have decided to set up a culture that is “male-hating [and] anti-man.” How would that even work?
After several commenters – sorry, toadies – asked him to explain this mysterious paradox, Varpole posted a clarification of his clarification on his blog.
First, I admit that “men maintain the culture” is an oversimplification. Obviously, that’s not true- certainly not today, arguably not ever. There are women police officers, women in government, women farmers, women firefighters, etc. Women do contribute to the maintenance of civilization. Not as much as men, but nonetheless.
On the other hand, women, feminists, and their assorted mangina lackeys have a disproportionate influence in the media and pop culture. Feminists and their dogs control the messages beamed at us through music, video games, and Hollywood. They have the print news media. They control primary education (how many teachers are men?) and thus the shaping of our youth. The infamous SOPA was almost certainly backed by feminists, in an attempt to bring the Internet (not coincidentally, the primary holdout of MRAs) under their control. Even when it is a male hand holding the pen, a male voice speaking into the mic, they are generally manginas who kowtow to female demands (see: Roger Ebert; Bill Clinton; H.L. Mencken). Thus, they are mouthpieces for the misandrist NWO, and are not in any way representative of men as a class; it’s just a different mechanism for the female perspective. …
I’m not saying thy’re calling for mass castration or anything like that (such a move would be too obvious). But there is a systematic denigration of men and masculinity in the media, and a subtle promotion of a misandrist, feminist, female supremacist ideology. In the news, in television, movies, literature, comic strips- we see the epidemic with our own eyes.
Huh. MEN created and still run the world, but “women, feminists, and their assorted mangina lackeys” dominate the media and popular culture with their evil anti-man agenda? There’s no getting around it: Varpole seems to be suggesting that MEN are just terrible at running the world.
Wouldn’t such an argument be … misandry?
Not even subtle misandry, at that.
I look forward to more blatant misandry from Anti-Man Boobz in the future.
As well as some critiques of his misandry from a mysterious, even newer blog that sprung up the other day: Anti-Anti-Manboobz, devoted to debunking Anti-Man Boobz and being meta as fuck.
Prepare to laugh your ass off (not literally, I hope) at this display of hilarity, courtesy of the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Oscar Wilde would be proud. Wait, not proud. Disgusted, and probably a little embarrassed for you.
I took this screenshot the other day. When I went back to see if there were any developments in the thread, I discovered that both the joke and hardwarequestions’ brilliant reply had picked up some more upvotes, and that crankycloud has apparently been banned. I guess that’s one way to deal with hecklers.
Arthur Goldwag, the author of the SPLC’s recent report on hatred in the Men’s Rights movement, has now responded to some of the hysteria his article provoked amongst MRAs. As Goldwag notes, contrary to what most MRAs seemed to conclude from the report,
the SPLC did not label MRAs as members of a hate movement; nor did our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites – false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like – are all without merit. But we didcall out specific examples of misogyny and the threat, overt or implicit, of violence.
Thomas James Ball, for example, who was hailed as a martyr on so many men’s rights forums, called for arson attacks on courthouses and police stations. The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik wrote extensively about the evils of feminism. We included as much as we did about Register-Her.com because it is so intimidating to its targets, not all of whom are criminals. When Elam accused Vliet Tiptree, a pseudonymous contributor to RadFem Hub, of “calling for extermination of half the human race; the male half, that is,” he offered a cash reward for her real identity. The names and locations of several candidates were publically aired.
Goldwag also takes a look at some of the radical feminists that have become boogeywomen for so many MRAs, and deals with other MRA complaints.
Obviously Elam and other MRAs will respond to Goldwag’s latest as well. Post links in the comments below as you find them, and I’ll add them to this post.
EDITED TO ADD: And, right on schedule, AVfM responds to Goldwag’s response. It’s a John the Other post, so be prepared to read a lot of words saying not very much.
One widespread belief of the manosphere crowd is that “Western women” – that is, white women in developed countries – are a bunch of stuck-up, demanding, divorce-initiating feminism-infected harridans. So the proper course of action for the almost-all-white dudes of the manosphere is to seek a woman with darker skin and a (supposedly) more pliable nature. Even better: beleaguered white dudes should move to one of the countries where these feminism-free gals live, because when you bring them to the United States they too have a tendency to become infected with evil feminism and to become as stuck-up and evil as their lighter-skinned sisters.
This belief isn’t universal amongst manospehreians by any stretch of the imagination. White nationalist manosphreians (like those who populate the blog In Mala Fide) get testy when their women are considered inferior to non-whites; others think that all women are equally evil. Still others think that moving to a whole other country is too much of a hassle. Rarely do you find a manospherian willing to state the obvious: that the “white women suck” mantra is as offensive to non-white women as it is to white women.
If one thinks about it, the misandry and divorce problem are problems that occur in countries where the women are light-skinned–mostly Northern Hemisphere Western Contries, and where the governments are atheist or were atheist.
Problem countries are Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, United States, France, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Austrailia, New Zealand, etc. In short–the West. Light skinned women are by nature more dominant and controlling. If you combine that with a culture that encourages bad behavior, you as a man are doomed.
So far, this is standard-issue western-women-suck-ism. But then Hell starts talking about genes.
So the misandry problem is problem of genetics and culture. We can see the genetic differences in the United States. Asian Women divorce their husbands at a much lower rate then the other racial groups. The exception in America is the American Black Women (But isn’t she exceptional, after all)? I mean native African Women have very little resemblance to American Black Women).
Ironically, it’s fairly typical for the white-women-suck crowd to hate black women even more; in this case the only non-typical thing about Hell’s screed is that he’s willing to cut African women some slack.
Now Hell sets forth his basic thesis:
My point is this: I maintain the best wife for a white man is someone darker skinned then he is. I maintain that the best culture for the white man and his wife is a man-friendly culture. For example, a white man and Mexican woman living in Mexico; a white man and Thai Woman living in Thailand; a white man and a Morracan Woman, living in Morraco; a white man and Turkish Woman, living in Turkey. This strategy neutralizes the light-skinned genes, and at the same time neutralizes the cultural influences.
Note: If you plan to move to Morocco to escape the tyranny of white women, you should probably learn to spell the name of the country correctly first.
Naturally, Hell can’t bring himself to suggest that white men should marry black women. And he thinks that even black men should give African-American women a pass:
For a black man, possibly the best plan is to emigrate to Africa in order to have a family. I had a friend who did this. Most African divorce laws keep the man firmly in charge with sole custody automatically going to the man.
While some Western-women-hating manospherians have something of a fetish for Eastern European women, Hell warns his fellow men to avoid these sneaky deceitful harridans as well:
Whatever you do, never bring an Eastern European, Russian, or Ukrainian Girl to the Unites States.
But it isn’t only the Eastern European women who are spoiled by the evil feminism of the west.
In fact don’t bring any woman to the United States. Remember: even the healthiest fish becomes sick when the lake is poisoned. Some fish will become sicker than others depending on their genetic makeup. For example, that nice girl you brought over from Asia might not divorce you when she comes to the USA, but she is likely to become a much different (difficult and unpredictable) person.
So who is the best man for the white woman living in the West? Quite simply, no man; or another woman. Very few men in the West will be able to satify Western White Women.
And this, naturally, leads to what what we might call Hell’s Final Solution to the problem:
These women need to be bred out of existence.
We as men can speed the extinction of Western White Women by encouraging them to pursue the single life or to pursue another woman as a spouse (lesbianism). We can do this actively and passively. Actively by outright encouragement, and passively by never giving a Western Woman access to our sperm, money, or time.
Despite its, er, problematic content, Hell’s comment managed to draw 21 upvotes from fellow Spearheaders, more than twice the number of downvotes it received.
I eagerly await A Voice for Men’s campaign to uncover and expose the identities of Hell and his upvoters – as well as against The Spearhead itself for providing a safe harbor for such thinking. I mean, AVfM literally offered a $1000 award for the personal information of a feminist who made similarly troubling remarks about men, and a separate $1000 reward for the identities of those involved in a theatrical production about a feminist who wrote a famous manifesto about the evils of men. Surely the A Voice for Men crowd will be equally offended by these remarks from their comrades on The Spearhead.
Here on Man Boobz we content ourselves with highlighting bad ideas, not harassing or threatening or exposing the personal information of those who promulgate them. The “war of ideas” isn’t an actual war. The bad ideas we highlight here are as silly as they are reprehensible; they will ultimately vanish from the world on their own — though hopefully our mockery of them will help to speed that process a little bit.
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to scarlettpipistrelle for pointing me to this lovely comment.
Over on A Voice for Men, our dear friend Paul Elam has come up with an interesting new way to celebrate Mother’s Day – with what is essentially the longest, least funny, and most rage-filled “Yo Mama” joke ever. (Indeed, it’s so rage-filled I should probably put a Trigger Warning right about here.)
Elam starts off by addressing the mothers of the world, suggesting he’s got a “a socially conscious twist” on the traditional Mother’s Day celebrations. Mothers, he argues, should gather together the flowers they’ve been given by their loved ones and:
Place a bunch of daffodils at a dumpster near you, perhaps one in which one of you, or one of your kind, has tossed an unwanted baby, leaving it there to slowly die alone in a pile of trash.
Perhaps you could lay a single rose at the base of a bridge that has been used by a mother to throw her baby into an icy river. Perhaps you can lay it there with hands that have beaten or shaken a baby to death.
You probably didn’t see that coming, did you? He goes on.
Now perhaps some of you could place large, colorful arrangements at the abortion centers where women go to have children cut out and laid to rest in those colorful and attractive biohazard containers that are all the rage in the clinics. …
Maybe you can lay virtual flowers at your computers to honor all the children that you and your sisters have pimped out to pedophiles, or perhaps the blossoms could be placed in your child’s room, which also doubles as your preferred place to abuse your own.
Oh, but you say you haven’t done any of these things, and that abortion isn’t actually the same as infanticide? No matter. Elam has an answer for that:
This is not a request for some mothers, or a percentage of them, but all of you. In fact, you don’t even have to be a mother. If you have a vagina, the blood of all those children, who are abused far more at the hands of women than men, has stained your skin and caked around the cuticles of your fingers.
If you are a mother, particularly one of the many abusers, or just one that has remained silent as your sisters have beaten, choked, stabbed, burned, drowned, abused, neglected, dumped, tortured and otherwise done the unspeakable to the most defenseless among us, then I hope to see those flowers in your murderous hands, paying homage to those that have been unfortunate enough to be placed in your path. …
In Daffodils for Dumpsters the gash gets you in, and you don’t really have a choice.
You see, Elam has decided that we live in an era of “collective guilt,” and that the evil (straw) feminists who go around blaming all men for the actions of a few – through such dastardly things like rape awareness seminars – deserve to find themselves collectively blamed as well.
Except that Elam’s post goes well beyond an ill-conceived and ill-intentioned attempt at “turnabout is fair play.” This isn’t a piece of Swiftian satire. He actually believes all this hateful nonsense, and says as much:
Now, do I really mean all this? Yes. It is not that women deserve to be collectively regarded as child abusers and killers. Most aren’t. Most are actually very good to their children and can even be trusted with the children of others. But that truth is not what is important here.
What is important is the children, or the principle, or whatever other bullshit we make up to convince ourselves it is not about demonizing women when that is exactly what we are doing.
I have to confess I have no idea what he’s trying to say in the second paragraph here. Did he mean to say “men” instead of “women?” If so, this is an interesting little slip.
He continues:
The fact is that mothers are more dangerous than fathers where it concerns children. They always have been. It is only a few percentage points in that direction, but of course in a White Ribbon way, it is more than enough to justify pointing a finger at your entire sex and feeling superior as we watch you atone for the unspeakable acts of a minority.
So, suck it up ladies. If you knew about White Ribbon and said nothing to object to it; if in general you have remained silent or actively participated as the image of the male half of the population has been reduced to that of a depraved threat, the step up and get your flowers. You deserve every last petal, stem and thorn.
I imagine Elam chuckling a bit as he typed that final word.
And a happy Mother’s Day to you, too!
Oh, and if you found yourself wondering about that “White Ribbon” thing, Elam is evidently (as best I can figure it) referring either to the women who, during World War I, handed out white ribbons to men who didn’t enlist in the army. Or he’s referring to this contemporary campaign to fight violence against women. But I don’t live inside Elam’s head, so I’m not sure what he meant, or why he seems to think that all women would know about either campaign, much less have any responsibility for them.
You may notice that Elam presents no actual evidence to back up his claims. There is no such evidence, because Elam’s accusations are utterly and completely untrue.
I have nothing whatsoever to do with r/beatingwomen. Nothing. I don’t know anything about who created it, or what their aim was beyond laughing at pictures and videos of violence against women. As I’ve said before, it’s a vile place. I think Reddit should shut it down.
This was posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day, with the headline: “Saw this today and I suppose that’s where we’re headed.” It’s gotten 556 upvotes, last I checked. (Those are net upvotes: it got 848 upvotes, 292 downvotes.) This is the world that a lot of MRAs, and Redditors in general, think they live in.
Amazingly, one of the few voices of reason to emerge in the whole discussion (besides that downvoted commenter and serveral others) turned out to be none other than Pierce Harlan of the False Rape Society (now called Community of the Wrongly Accused). While not averse to spreading misinformation about rape and false rape accusations himself, he argued in a comment (and in a similarly worded blog post) that this kind of raving hysteria wasn’t helpful, concluding:
The delicate balance that commands us to punish rapists while not punishing the innocent is extremely serious business. We need more sober, more adult, more serious voices to be part of the public discourse. The last thing we need is more Chicken Little hysteria, no matter which side it’s coming from.
I’m guessing the upvotes he got for his comment must have come from visitors from his blog, because up until he posted that comment the few dissenters were mostly being dismissed.
The Men’s Rights subreddit: Waxing hysterical about imaginary oppressions since March 2008.
Over on The Counter-Feminist, the self-proclaimed Counter-Feminist Agent of Change (CFAC) known as Fidelbogen has written a very strange fan letter to Justin Bieber. The teen heartthrob and lesbian-doppleganger, you see, has written a song about the woman who falsely accused him of fathering a child, which makes Bieber practically an MRA.
Poor Fidelbogen is clearly having a hard time dealing with his conflicted feelings about Bieber. He’s overjoyed that Bieber is taking on an evil paternity fraudress, but he’s clearly afraid that expressing too much enthusiasm about the Beebs will make him look, I don’t know, sort of girly? What else could explain all the hemming and hawing in his account of the Beebs’ new song?
Mind you, not that I give two spits about the young pop singer Justin Bieber, but the significance of certain events does not escape me. The lad is quite popular among people of a certain generational subculture, and he was recently the target of attempted paternity fraud. The attempt failed, and Justin memorialized the experience in a song … .
The Fides goes on to deliver a standard-issue anti-feminist minirant:
What’s this got to do with feminism, you ask? Well, feminism has empowered women to do many, many things — especially things that would hurt or exploit males. Likewise, feminist propaganda and legal activism has generated a cultural climate in which the “deadbeat dad” trope has risen to special prominence — aye, to a point of moral hysteria! Finally, feminist complicity with the paternity fraud industry is written in blazing letters by anybody who cares to look.
And then it’s back to the glory of Bieber:
Justin Bieber’s song might just hammer home, in the minds of certain male youngsters, some of the cruel facts of male existence in today’s world. And that can only be to the political benefit of the non-feminist revolution. So, on with it!
I don’t know. When I feel the urge to listen to music about paternity fraud, I tend to go with the classics:
As you may be aware, Ferdinand Bardamu of In Mala Fide has taken a brave and bold stance against “fat chicks.” That in itself is not very surprising, or interesting, really. But in a recent post he offers a take on the fat acceptance movement that betrays an strange bit of … paranoia, maybe?
After a few uninspired swipes at “fat-assed she-beasts and big-titted blubberboys” and the “femilosers” on Tumblr who recently batted around an anti-“fat chick” post from his blog, he makes this strange pronouncement:
These histrionic little girls are full of it. They don’t want fat acceptance — they want to FORCE men to be attracted to their endless rolls of fat and their cheesy crotch creases. Fortunately, their emotional delicateness will ensure that they will fail. We are the Patriarchs, and we’re coming to take back what’s ours. Beware.
Ferdy, don’t worry. The fat chicks of the world aren’t going to FORCE you to lust after them, and wouldn’t even if they could. I haven’t conducted a poll or anything, but I’m fairly certain that the fat women of the world are just fine with you not being attracted to them. Heck, I’m pretty sure most skinny women would prefer that you not be attracted to them either. They really don’t want your lucky charms.
Also, the weird little bit at the end there, the thing about “coming to take back what’s ours?” In The Incredibles, they called that “monologuing.” I don’t know quite what motivates so many manopshereians to want to talk like comic book supervillains. But it is sort of adorable.
Over on The Counter-Feminist, the self-proclaimed Counter-Feminist Agent of Change (CFAC) known as Fidelbogen has written a 