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Because dolls are scary.
Sometimes.
Wrap her up in a bullet and shoot her round the world,
This is dF
Sometimes.
Wrap her up in a bullet and shoot her round the world,
This is dF
Oct. 24th, 2013
MEN HAVE FEELINGS TOO, YOU KNOW
Oct. 24th, 2013 10:24 amITEM: The Daily Beast has an interesting TL;DR story on the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM).
You know, the movement where oppressed dudebros fight against the evil domineering feminist matriarchy that enslaves us.
Yes. The same movement that comes up with ad campaigns like this.
Despite being a man, I’m not that sympathetic to the dudebro cause. (Which, I understand, makes me a “pussy” – a term that’s been pretty much applied to me since junior high school, which tells you a lot about the mentality involved here.) I’ve been hearing various versions of the anti-feminist movement for a few decades now –Rush Limbaugh has been blathering about FemiNazis since the 90s, which is around the time that Promise Keepers started holding male-bonding stadium events encouraging Christian men to treat their Christian wives better by asserting their authority over them as God-appointed head of the household and destroying ungodly feminism.
I’ve been generally unimpressed by such things. The FemiNazi gag always sounded to me like those guys who have one bad relationship and get drunk in bars moaning about how all women are evil lowdown two-timing ballbreaking bitches out to castrate them, and feel the solution is to man up, grow a pair and show ‘em who’s boss. It’s like the He Man Woman Haters Club – grown men acting like Spanky and Alfalfa, only angrier and more pathetic. The current MRM movement sounds pretty much the same.
And yet, regardless of what it sounds like, I do kind of get what the MRM at heart wants to accomplish – or at least what some of its supporters think they want to accomplish. Because they do raise some legit issues from time to time where men get short shrift, as the article points out:
All fair points for discussion. And it’s fair to say these issues don’t get a whole lot of sympathy or attention because hey, patriarchy.
The problem is that the MRM – which has been building itself up into a position to be able to call attention to these issues – is helmed and driven by spokespersons with a tendency to undermine all of that by spending more time going ballistic on feminists as the root cause of all men’s problems as though we’re all living in an oppressive matriarchy cleverly disguised as a patriarchy. Just like in The Matrix, only with women instead of robots. Or fembots, maybe.
(They even actually use Matrix references to describe this. Really.)
And they undermine it further with ads like the one above. I do understand that the ad isn’t intended to say rape is okay. But regardless of the intention, what it says is: “It’s rape when men say its rape, not when the person being raped says its rape, because we all know women can be lying-ass bitches.”
It’s basically another manifestation of this vague fear dudebros have of being falsely accused of rape by a woman who’s angry at them because they couldn’t make her come, or she wants to blackmail them for money, or she’s a teasing bitch, or whatever. (“Who knows why women do anything, am I right guys?”) So what dudebros really want is an escape hatch in case they get accused, and the most traditional and convenient ones are (1) narrowly define rape as “the kind you see performed by street gangs or psycho boyfriends in action movies” and (2) blame the victim. You all know the excuses: She was asking for it. She shouldn’t have dressed that way. She shouldn’t have put herself in that position. She should have said no earlier. I paid for her drinks, I had something coming to me. Etc.
In other words, it says a lot more about the men supporting these ads than the women portrayed in them. It says they are men who don’t fully understand just what rape is, and why it’s not really up to them to define what counts as rape.
Anyway, it’s an interesting article. And it’s a textbook case of how extremism does more to bury legitimate issues under vitriolic batshit-conspiracy rhetoric than it does to raise awareness of them. The current leadership of the MRM seem a lot less interested in fighting for equal rights for men than in ranting angrily against the “bitches”, “whores” and “cunts” making their lives so miserable – and then complain when people label them as misogynists.
Poor lambs.
Meanwhile, I’d also recommend John Scalzi’s take on a related issue – sexual harassment at comic/SF/fantasy cons, and the tendency of dudebros to belittle him as a feminist as though it’s an insult.
Now and then we wonder who the real men are,
This is dF
You know, the movement where oppressed dudebros fight against the evil domineering feminist matriarchy that enslaves us.
Yes. The same movement that comes up with ad campaigns like this.
Despite being a man, I’m not that sympathetic to the dudebro cause. (Which, I understand, makes me a “pussy” – a term that’s been pretty much applied to me since junior high school, which tells you a lot about the mentality involved here.) I’ve been hearing various versions of the anti-feminist movement for a few decades now –Rush Limbaugh has been blathering about FemiNazis since the 90s, which is around the time that Promise Keepers started holding male-bonding stadium events encouraging Christian men to treat their Christian wives better by asserting their authority over them as God-appointed head of the household and destroying ungodly feminism.
I’ve been generally unimpressed by such things. The FemiNazi gag always sounded to me like those guys who have one bad relationship and get drunk in bars moaning about how all women are evil lowdown two-timing ballbreaking bitches out to castrate them, and feel the solution is to man up, grow a pair and show ‘em who’s boss. It’s like the He Man Woman Haters Club – grown men acting like Spanky and Alfalfa, only angrier and more pathetic. The current MRM movement sounds pretty much the same.
And yet, regardless of what it sounds like, I do kind of get what the MRM at heart wants to accomplish – or at least what some of its supporters think they want to accomplish. Because they do raise some legit issues from time to time where men get short shrift, as the article points out:
The New York Times may have recently reported that the majority of sexual assault victims in the military are men, but they are light years behind AV4M and other men’s rights sites in doing so. Then there are male victims of domestic abuse whose plight is largely ignored by both the media and the justice system. It’s hard to say exactly how big the problem is because there has never been sufficient interest to fund a proper study tracking it. There are still many regions in the United States that lack any kind of safe houses or shelters for men at risk. Even in my progressive hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Police Bureau’s domestic violence victims’ resource manual defines a domestic abuse shelter as “a temporary place for women.” In instances of immediate crisis, men who call the police are as likely to be offered smirks as they are protection. Just as female victims have historically had to deal with some form of 'she must have been asking for it,' males face derision for 'not being man enough' to defend themselves.
The MRM also shines a spotlight on underage male statutory rape victims. For the most part our justice system treats the crime as being in effect victimless, while the media tends to portray the victim as “lucky.” What’s more, male victims of statutory rape can be liable for child support payments if the molestation results in a pregnancy.
The MRM also shines a spotlight on underage male statutory rape victims. For the most part our justice system treats the crime as being in effect victimless, while the media tends to portray the victim as “lucky.” What’s more, male victims of statutory rape can be liable for child support payments if the molestation results in a pregnancy.
All fair points for discussion. And it’s fair to say these issues don’t get a whole lot of sympathy or attention because hey, patriarchy.
The problem is that the MRM – which has been building itself up into a position to be able to call attention to these issues – is helmed and driven by spokespersons with a tendency to undermine all of that by spending more time going ballistic on feminists as the root cause of all men’s problems as though we’re all living in an oppressive matriarchy cleverly disguised as a patriarchy. Just like in The Matrix, only with women instead of robots. Or fembots, maybe.
(They even actually use Matrix references to describe this. Really.)
And they undermine it further with ads like the one above. I do understand that the ad isn’t intended to say rape is okay. But regardless of the intention, what it says is: “It’s rape when men say its rape, not when the person being raped says its rape, because we all know women can be lying-ass bitches.”
It’s basically another manifestation of this vague fear dudebros have of being falsely accused of rape by a woman who’s angry at them because they couldn’t make her come, or she wants to blackmail them for money, or she’s a teasing bitch, or whatever. (“Who knows why women do anything, am I right guys?”) So what dudebros really want is an escape hatch in case they get accused, and the most traditional and convenient ones are (1) narrowly define rape as “the kind you see performed by street gangs or psycho boyfriends in action movies” and (2) blame the victim. You all know the excuses: She was asking for it. She shouldn’t have dressed that way. She shouldn’t have put herself in that position. She should have said no earlier. I paid for her drinks, I had something coming to me. Etc.
In other words, it says a lot more about the men supporting these ads than the women portrayed in them. It says they are men who don’t fully understand just what rape is, and why it’s not really up to them to define what counts as rape.
Anyway, it’s an interesting article. And it’s a textbook case of how extremism does more to bury legitimate issues under vitriolic batshit-conspiracy rhetoric than it does to raise awareness of them. The current leadership of the MRM seem a lot less interested in fighting for equal rights for men than in ranting angrily against the “bitches”, “whores” and “cunts” making their lives so miserable – and then complain when people label them as misogynists.
Poor lambs.
Meanwhile, I’d also recommend John Scalzi’s take on a related issue – sexual harassment at comic/SF/fantasy cons, and the tendency of dudebros to belittle him as a feminist as though it’s an insult.
Now and then we wonder who the real men are,
This is dF