Sasha’s eloquent words, immortalized in ugly MRA poster form by Cloudiah of Artistry for Feminism. And Kittens.
Meet Sasha. Sasha is an angry young man living in England (allegedly), with a super-HAWT girlfriend (allegedly), and a lot of opinions about feminism (not-so-allegedly). The other day, he decided to share some of these opinions with the world. Or at least with any of those feminists who happened to be reading the Men’s Rights subreddit at the time.
In a topic devoted to a conference on “lad culture” in British universities, Sasha lashed out at feminists for what he sees as their hypocritical attack on boorish, sexist “lads.” Hypocritical, you see, because these very same women allegedly have sex with posh men all the bloody time:
Is there something about Men’s Rights Activists that renders them utterly incapable of designing posters that aren’t embarrassingly ugly and offputting?
Posters designed by MRAs are so routinely godawful it’s hard not to wonder if there is something inherent about them or their ideas that prevents them from seeing what a complete mess they’re making when they put together something like the poster above, which I recently found amongst a whole collection of similarly terrible posters at the website What Men Are Saying About Women.
In the case of Christian J, the WMASAW poster-designer, there is clearly something more than bad ideas at work here, but I do think the bad ideas of the Men’s Rights movement are a large part of the reason why MRAs can’t design posters to save their lives. Their posters are muddled messes because their ideology is a muddled mess.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the regulars are getting worked up about imaginary feminists again. Well, I suppose that’s pretty much all they ever do. But these two have managed to get even more worked up about even more imaginary feminists than they usually do:
Hey ladies! Dean Esmay reaches out to the young women of America
Not that long ago, an 18-year-old student named Carly, appalled by the rampant misogyny on display at A Voice for Men, sent a critical but thoughtful email to a number of the men associated with the site challenging them to rise above their hatred of women.
AVFM “Managing Editor” Dean Esmay decided to take her email as an opportunity to reach out to all the Carlys out there in the world in an attempt to win them over to AVFM’s peculiar brand of “human rights activism,” penning what he called an
open letter … not just to you, but to any young woman who has an open mind and is willing to be challenged on her prejudices.
Naturally, given that Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most verbose douchebags in history, it was long as hell — some 3000 words. But Esmay’s diplomatically worded attempt at outreach didn’t go quite as well as he might have hoped. Carly responded with a note saying that his open letter had merely
reinforced everything I believe. It seems we are at a stalemate, you will never agree with me, and I will never agree with you.
So where might poor Dean Esmay might have gone wrong in his attempt to win Carly’s heart and mind?
Let’s start here, with 5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Woman-Hating Piece of Shit Hate Site, in the form of direct quotes from The Esmay himself. Since Esmay is so long-winded, I’ve highlighted some of my favorite bits in bold.
1)“[Y]ou’re 18, and so, not to put too fine a point on it, you are still a young skull full of mush.”
2) “[M]en have few to no voices speaking about issues that are specific to men, or defending men as a group, in this society. Until very recently in history men never have had such a voice. Because pretty much all civilizations for the last few thousand years have prioritized the needs and desires of women over those of men. For hundreds, even thousands, of years.
3)“If you believe men have silenced women for thousands of years … you believe something that just not true. … Furthermore, if you believe that, what you have to believe is that Asian men have been oppressing Asian women for thousands of years, black men have been oppressing black women for thousands of years, European men, Australasian men, and so on, have all been oppressing their women for thousands of years. And those weak women could do nothing about it. So what you believe here isn’t just wrong, it’s racist.”
4) “For most of history, being female was a privilege. It carried certain special rights that only applied to women, and special responsibilities that only applied to women, and through most of history, being male was a burden, a burden which carried certain rights that only applied to men, and those rights were there mostly so they could discharge their duties to women properly.”
5)“[Y]ou may occasionally see angry remarks or articles on this site. What I would hope you would do with that, when you do see it, is contemplate that there is a difference between righteous anger at real injustice, and what you seem to have misinterpreted as hate.”
The funniest thing about Esmay’s “open letter” is that this bizarre crackpottery, easily seen through by anyone with any knowledge of history or sociology or, hell, the real world, is his attempt to sound as reasonable as possible. He’s reined in the wild conspiratorial ranting he often indulges in when arguing with ideological foes; he’s avoided the misogynistic slurs (cunt, bitch, whore) favored by other AVFMers like Paul Elam and Diana Davison. And this is the best he can manage.
The Men’s “Human Rights” Movement isn’t ready for its close-up. And I suspect that it never will be.
EDITED TO ADD: A commenter has pointed out another quote I should have included as well. So here is BONUS EXTRA LEAST CONVINCING DEAN ESMAY ARGUMENT NUMBER SIX:
6) “The truth is, the most privileged class of people in the whole wide world are young women living in places like the US, UK, Canada, etc.–and if you want to be treated like an equal, you should not flinch or cry like a little girl if someone tells you that.“
How dare you accuse us of sexism, you spoiled little girl!
This picture has nothing whatsoever to to with the post. I just like it.
It’s Friday. Why not welcome in the upcoming weekend with a picture of an anarchist cat and a completely unrelated, completely unhinged manifesto from the MensRants subreddit, the Men’s Rights subreddit’s unruly younger brother.
In a post with the somewhat roundabout title “Just posting this publicly gives me an ulcer. But I won’t let it stop me,” an angry fella who calls himself sizzletron set forth his opinions about, well, a lot of things having to do with women. It’s a piece that’s pretty much impossible to summarize, since sizzletron apparently finds it difficult to keep the thread of an argument going from one sentence to the next.
No, this is real. I didn’t make it up. I just blurred out the c-word.
Last week I wrote about the fondness of a certain Men’s Rights website for a certain four-letter word starting with the letter c. This week they’ve topped themselves — with a postering campaign based on the c-word.
Yep: A Voice for Men has thrown its support behind a postering campaign with the slogan: “Having a vagina is no excuse for being a C*NT.”
They don’t use an asterisk.
The postering campaign, spearheaded by a Youtube antifeminist calling himself Bane666au, feature what purport to be real quotes from feminists alongside not-exactly-subtle stock photos depicting comically angry women. For example:
If you want historically accurate male-on-male combat action, the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association Board of Directors Simulator 3000: 2011 Edition is the way to go
So our old friend Vox Day is working on a video game. And he’s decided to make a bold and unprecedented choice in his design of the game: he’s not going to have any ladies in it.
But it turns out this choice has nothing to do with anything so pedestrian as misogyny. In fact, it was the only rational choice he could make. Let’s let him explain. He has such a way with words. (He’s apparently some sort of writer.)
I am a game designer. I am designing and producing a game that does not, and will not, have a single female character in it. This is not because I am misogynistic. This is not because I do not women to play the game. This is because putting women in the game makes no sense, violates the principle of the suspension of disbelief, and will not make the game any better as a game.
Well, that makes sense. I mean, the game is probably some game that has to have only male characters to be believable. You know, like Dance Party with the American Presidents or the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association Board of Directors Simulator 3000 or something like that.
I am the lead designer of First Sword, a combat management game. The game has orcs and men, elves and dwarves. It has goblins and trolls. But it has no women.
Uh, wait. It’s a combat game filled with orcs, goblins and trolls, but putting women in it would “violate … the principle of the suspension of disbelief.”
Because the game is a gladiator game. Women cannot credibly fight as gladiators. We don’t put women in the game for the same reason we don’t put bunny rabbits or children in the game.
Well, why not? You put fucking orcs in it. Why not make a combat game with bunny rabbits?
Putting women in the game would be an act of brutal sadism, an act of barbarism even by pagan Roman standards. While the Romans did occasionally put female gladiators in the arena, they were there as a comedic act.
Really? This is a VIDEO GAME. You can do whatever you want with it. It is really harder to imagine a woman being able to fight a man than it is to imagine entire races of imaginary humanoid creatures?
We could, of course, throw out historical verisimilitude. But we’re not going to. Because we value that verisimilitude far more than we value the opinion of a few whiny women who don’t play the sort of games we make anyhow.
While the rest of America wastes its time celebrating “President’s Day,” we here at Man Boobz celebrate those who truly run this great nation of ours: Evil, selfish women.
Wait, you were thinking, I thought it was men who mostly ran the world? No. It just looks that way. Oh, sure, all the presidents have been men. The overwhelming majority of elected officials are men. The rich people who seem to have the most influence over politicians tend to be men — it’s the Koch brothers, not the Koch sisters.
But to judge who has power in this world by looking at those who have power in this world is a giant mistake, according to our eminently logical friends in the Men’s Rights movement. That’s the APEX FALLACY.
Let me just preface it with a big TRIGGER WARNING for its violent rape fantasy.
Ten upvotes. No downvotes.
I guess that’s technically a rape metaphor, but it’s the most graphic rape metaphor I’ve run across in a long time.
If you ever find yourself wondering why the so-called Men’s Rights movement has never done, as far as I can tell, a single fucking thing for male victims of rape — other than rant about it online in an attempt to one-up feminists — I think this comment suggests one highly plausible explanation: because many if not most MRAs don’t actually feel empathy for the vast majority of male rape victims, who are, after all, men in prison raped by other men. They see rape as an appropriate punishment for men they don’t like, and many actually relish the thought of certain men being raped.
I mean, it goes without saying that MRAs generally have little or no empathy for women who are raped, and indulge in rape jokes about women all the fucking time, but you’d think they’d do a better job of at least pretending to care about raped men.
If you’re interested in an organization that actually does care about victims of rape and other forms of sexual abuse in prison — regardless of the gender of the victim — you may want to check out Just Detention International.
![flying_downwardss 12 points 22 hours ago (18|6) I'M SORRY FOR BEING BORN MALE, I'M SORRY! Is that what the feminists and manginas want to hear? permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]Maschalismos 7 points 18 hours ago (7|0) You know full well it is. And the only way for you to atone for your sin -making a woman feel bad by existing- is to kill yourself. Thats why they chuckle at male suicide figures: they think its justice for the vast, infinite, undefined bulk of crimes against women since the dawn of time.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/sorry.png?ssl=1)
