What’s the best way forward for the Men’s Rights movement today? About the only thing I’ve been able to conclude from this discussion in the Men’s Rights subreddit is that it will more than likely involve heavy use of the word “cunt.” Men’s Rights redditors sure do love the word “cunt.” (See here for the rest of this particular discussion.)
This next bit follows directly from the above:
Yep, you heard it right:
To be classified as a hate group by such a large organization is the first step to gaining wider recognition.
If that’s the case, Men’s Rights Redditors, why are you so mad at the SPLC? Why aren’t you sending it thank-you notes?
Also, just a point of fact: The SPLC report didn’t actually classify the Men’s Rights subreddit as a hate group. It just pointed out that r/mensrights is full of misogynists. But apparently a lot of Men’s Rights Redditors want to take that whole hate group thing and run with it. You go, boys (and sometimes, oddly, girls)!
Reading this blog, you might get the impression that Men’s Rights activists lack a sense of humor. Not so! Some of them even make their own hilarious comics! I’d like to celebrate three of the finest MRA cartoons I’ve seen thus far in the first edition of what I’d like to call the MRA Comics Cavalcade. Click the thumbnails to go to the (full-sized) comics themselves.
In this edition of the popular The Pigman Cometh, the aforementioned Pigman, who has apparently killed a woman, dances with her corpse while spouting humorous remarks about how women and marriage suck. This comic is written by one dude, and drawn by another. Yes, it takes two people to produce masterpieces like this.Two separate people.
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In this NSFW cartoon found on the blog Wimminz, two evil feminists talk evilly about divorce and park in a handicapped parking space. Just like real feminists would! And then a guy has sex with, apparently, some sex dolls?
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And, finally, in this edition of plasticBrickAutomaton, an evil feminist door-to-door saleswoman tries to sell some dude a weird and incorrect caricature of postmodernism. The guy cleverly parries her attempts to indoctrinate him by attaching a baby to a balloon and letting it float away, to ultimately meet its demise. (One imagines.) This got more than 100 upvotes when it was posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Sometimes I ask myself: what is it that I really hope to accomplish with this website, aside from entertaining myself and my readers, and exposing misogynist assholes for who they are. There’s a part of me that still hopes that someday, something I write will cause some misogynist and/or Men’s Rightser out there to develop a modicum of self-awareness, look at what they’ve been saying or doing, and say to themselves, “I’m really kind of a tool, aren’t I? Maybe I should stop.”
When the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the Men’s Rights movement came out, I hoped it might have a similar sort of effect. Or that, even if it didn’t persuade any MRAs out there that they were wrong, it might at least convince a few that they were going about things the wrong way. Nope. On the Men’s Rights subreddit, at least, it seems to have sent many of the regulars into an indignant tizzy, and they have doubled down on their peculiar brand of politics-by-whining-online.
Then there’s this post, currently the top post on the subreddit:
Wow, if the Men’s Rights subreddit had anything to do with that, that would indeed be a victory. As one regular put it:
Thing is, I read r/mensrights pretty regularly, and I don’t remember any campaign there to protect the rights of fishermen in New Zealand.
Turns out that’s because the campaign, such as it was, consisted of one post some months back, which got all of 11 upvotes at the time. The current post in which r/mensrights congratulates itself for its “victory” has gotten, last I checked, 120 upvotes, more than ten times that. Simplecosine’s self-congratulatory comment in the new thread has gotten 36 upvotes. The comment in the original thread asking r/mensrightsers to send an email to the US Secretary of State’s office got … one upvote. In other words, only a handful of Men’s Rights Redditors even noticed the original post, much less sent along an email.
The Men’s Rights subreddit: Taking Credit for Shit They Didn’t Do Since 2008.
And then there’s this post:
I’ve got nothing to say about this one — it’s basically self-refuting — except that I’m sort of bemused by the notion that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “semi-women group.” Uh, what is that exactly? A group with some women in it? A group that doesn’t think women are all a bunch of evil bitches? The horror!
Oh, Men’s Rights movement. You’ll never change, will you?
EDITED TO ADD: And speaking of never changing, here’s how one Men’s Rights redditor responded to my comments there suggesting that maybe, just maybe, MRAs should actually denounce and distance themselves from someone calling for terrorism:
Let me just highlight that bit at the end again:
[T]he cost to the establishment to maintain the status quo in regards to divorce, custody, etc. must be made so high that it’s just no longer feasible. If that means instilling abject fear into the hearts of judges, cops and legislators by making them think their careers and/or lives could be forfeit unless they change their attitudes towards men, then so be it.
Trying to instill fear for one’s life in your opponents: that is the very definition of terrorism.
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Thanks! (And thanks again to all who’ve already donated.) Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:
So the other day, the atheist blogger Rebecca Watson, aka Skepchick, had this little conversation on Twitter:
Watson, you may recall, got herself onto the Men’s Rights radar a few months back, after a brief comment she made in a podcast — suggesting that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea for a guy to hit on woman he’s never spoken to before while the two of them are alone in an elevator at 4 AM – somehow turned into a Big Fucking Thing on the Internet, because how dare she say such a thing, it’s creep-shaming, she must hate men, bla bla bla.
So, anyhoo, one Men’s Rights Reddit noticed this little Twitter exchange, and posted it to the Men’s Rights subreddit. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. MRAs hating women? How dare she suggest such a thing!
Here are some of the things that assorted Men’s Rights Redditors posted in response, to remind us all that the Men’s Rights movement isn’t all about shitting on women. Let’s start with this lovely rebuttal, boasting nearly 60 net upvotes:
This comment inspired a long and winding discussion of the word “cunt,” and why it’s like totally ok to use it all the time, because in England the UK people call men “cunts” as well.
Speaking of fantasy, here’s a strange bit of paranoia, which nonetheless drew upvotes from the very same people who are outraged that Watson was a bit creeped out by a dude she didn’t know asking her to come to his hotel room at 4 AM:
And here’s still more evidence that MRAs, despite their many egregious flaws, do at least have vivid imaginations:
Some other comments, all of which got at least a few upvotes from the MR regulars:
Let’s end with this eloquent plea for people to not give a shit if MRAs hate women:
The folks in the Men’s Rights subreddit are currently debating whether or not to change the subreddit’s slogan, which is currently: “Mens’ Rights: Earning Scorn from Bigoted Feminists and White Knights Since 2008.”
So let me humbly suggest:
Mens’ Rights: Like it’s even relevant if mens rights is anti women in regard to if mens rights is a movement about addressing mens issues.
Or the even punchier:
Men’s Rights: i’m tired of not using the term “cunt”.
Child pornography is a multi-billion dollar international industry for a reason, people enjoy it. Humans are the most sexual creatures on the planet, the second is our closest relative the bonobo ape. Kids and adults have been having sex since before the dawn of man. If you want the rape and the kidnappings to stop you legalize it and take it out of the hands of the black market. Prohibition doesn’t work.
Yep, that’s right, he’s arguing that the best way to stop the abuse of children inherent in the production of child porn is to legalize it. And he got more upvotes than downvotes for his cheerful child porn apologetics.
After thinking the issue over a little more, Sirhotalot returned with an reassessment of sorts:
Edit: I was wrong about the child porn industry.
Yes, yes you were.
Apparently it’s actually quite small.
Yeah, that’s really not the main problem with your child porn apologia. The main problem is that IT IS A CHILD PORN APOLOGIA.
I am devoid of wit today, so here without comment is a heaping slab of “women are whores” courtesy of the Men’s Rights subreddit. The whole thread is full of poop; check it out.
Clever. You encourage hatred towards men while using their own language to shame them. …
You’re just a hate-mongerer albeit an intelligent and creative one. Hitler would have just loved you
That’s right. I “encourage hatred towards men” by reporting what some dudes actually post on the internet, usually under a fake name that can’t be traced back to them. Pointing out when someone says something shitty evidently makes me as bad as Hitler. (I should note that I mock specific men, not men in general, and that I also mock specific women with similar opinions.)
Casper also complains that “[e]ven the name of your site is an effort to shame men.” Again, I should point out that the dumb punny title of this blog isn’t directed at all men, merely those who act like misogynist boobs (or, if you prefer, boobz). “Boob” is pretty much the mildest insult I can think of, not to mention one that is a bit archaic; it’s a bit like calling someone a ruffian or a jackanape. Frankly, it’s far too nice a name for many of the people I write about here.
Of course, Casper isn’t the only one who feels that pointing out the offensive crap that people say is somehow equivalent of starting a death camp in your backyard. Take the many critics of ShitRedditSays.
For those who aren’t familiar with the ways of Reddit, ShitRedditSays (or SRS) is a user-created forum (subreddit) on Reddit devoted to pointing out some of the worst, most bigoted and awful crap posted on Reddit that nonetheless gets upvotes and acclaim from Reddit regulars.
The SRS modus operandi may seem a bit familiar to anyone who reads Man Boobz: SRSers find highly upvoted crap on Reddit and post it to their subreddit, where others react with horror and/or laugh about how hilariously awful it is. They don’t send out “downvote brigades” to downvote the crap they link to; they don’t try to track the bigots down in the real world and harass them. No, SRSers post what they find, and they mock.
On a couple of occasions, they’ve gone further. When they discovered that actual child porn was being circulated in Reddit’s “Jailbait” subreddit, a hangout for ephebophile creepers to creep on pictures of underage girls, SRSers spread the word beyond Reddit, and the resulting media attention led to Reddit finally deleting that subreddit.
Problem solved? Not exactly; the creepers merely moved on to any number of other subreddits devoted to the sexualization of underage girls. And so SRS struck again, alerting the media to the fact that Reddit still hosted a forum even creepier than r/jailbait – that is, r/preteen_girls, devoted to sexualized pictures of girls under the age of 13. This time, the Reddit admins moved more quickly, and banned all the subreddits that, in their words, “focus on sexualization of children.”
And apparently the Reddit admins are still pissed off about it. Recently, someone on Reddit leaked the log of a private chat between a Reddit moderator and one of the site’s administrators (that is, someone who actually works at Reddit). (See here and here for more details.)
The admin, known as hueypriest, described SRS’s attempts to get child porn and other material sexualizing children off of Reddit as “kind of like a forrest [sic] fire,” and grumbled about SRSers and other opponents of child porn sending “frivolous tips” to the FBI:
the fbi is not interested in following up leads of 17 year olds who’s boyfriends post shit on the internet
And evidently neither was Reddit, until SRSers and others revealed what was going on in its sleaziest subreddits to the world.
Again, all SRS did was to point out what was there.
Ever since Reddit’s belated shutdown of what hueypriest euphemistically described as the “questionable” subreddits, there’s a lot of talk on Reddit about how SRS needs to be shut down.
A couple of comments in the SubredditDrama subreddit pretty much sum up the frustrations a lot of us feel towards Reddit’s admins and many of the site’s users. 1338h4x writes:
Subreddits sexualizing kids? Let that slide for 5 years until the public pressure and bad PR is finally too much. Subreddit calling out sexism, bigotry, etc? SHUT IT DOWN RIGHT NOW!
This would just be the ultimate validation of SRS’s message. I dare them to do it.
Making reddit look bad = the worst thing. Perhaps they should stay on the ball and actually get rid off the terrible shit in advance … you know, that way they don’t look bad by having a policy that tacitly allows child pornography to remain on the website for extended periods of time.
You would think this is a no-brainer. Apparently this is not the case~
