MRAs are hilarious. We just write down things that they say.
a user in /r/ShitRedditSays (/r/SRS for short) has created a sort of Hall of Fame of quotes from men’s rights “activists” on reddit who presume to define feminism and feminists. In their own words:
How do magnets work? What makes the sky blue? What are the Olay seven signs of ageing? These are just a few of the questions science has yet to answer. But by far the biggest mystery of all is feminism. What is it? Who subscribes to it? And what does it portend? Until comparatively recently science had no answers to these difficult questions. But now, thanks to the combined collective wisdom of reddit, its Byzantine intricacies have been unravelled. In this thread, I will present the sum of reddit’s expansive knowledge on feminism. And as you might expect, most of the quotes below are indeed from the people who talk about feminism more than any other group on earth: mens rights advocates!
The results are hilarious, and not at all surprising for anyone who has spent a minuscule amount of time arguing from a feminist perspective on reddit. And don’t think that the quotes themselves are hard to find or anything. According to the OP, it took a couple of hours to create this huge-ass compilation of redditry, just by doing a fairly simple search for the “feminism” keyword. This is because it’s MRA that like to talk about the term itself, while actual feminists discuss the actual sociopolitical issues.
Some choice quotes to give you an idea:
- Misandrist feminists want gender based apartheid, and the male population culled to lest than 10%
- They sure do love their homosexuals, those feminists…
- Feminism will not fight for men because its very purpose is to fight AGAINST men. How much more evidence do the men here need that feminism hates you?
- Feminism IS the system
- Feminism has ALWAYS been about promoting the needs of women above those of men.
- feminism taken to it’s logical conclusion: Oppression everywhere you look. Paranoia and suspicion about every word you hear. The patriarchy is out to get you. Women are oppressed by evil men with impunity. Big Father is watching you. Big Father will rape you. Your only function as a woman in this “patriarchy” is to be raped and killed. Women have been so brainwashed by the patriarchy that they can never be free. The only solution – the final solution – is to remove the male from the planet and cut out the cancer before it kills you. Do you want to be free? You’re not free. You’ll never be free. The only path to freedom is to destroy the male that keeps you down. 77 cents on the dollar. 1 in 4. Rape, rape and more rape. Everything, everywhere is rape. Rape is around every corner. Sexism spews from the mouths of everyone around you. Look what men have done to you. Look how they hold you back. There’s not enough female electrical engineers because the patriarchy holds them back. You could rule the world. You DESERVE to rule the world. If women ruled the world there would be no war, there would be no sickness, there would be no pollution, there would be no discrimination, the would be no hate. If women ruled the world all the problems would be solved – forever! Doesn’t the world deserve better than what MEN can give it? Don’t you see how men everywhere are nothing more than a disgusting cancer rotting our world from the inside out? Don’t you see it makes sense that men and masculinity should be destroyed? Don’t you??!!
And that’s just the tip of the penis iceberg. Take a gander yourself and laugh your heart out.
/inb4 MRAs tell me how they find nothing funny or questionable about these quotes.
I'm certainly not anywhere close to a MRA, but I do think a lot of those points about feminism are fairly valid.
There IS separatist feminism, and many fems do tend to trust women more than men in all situations (I'm not talking about simply when you're out on a dark street, etc.)
Feminists also tend to act as if 'the patriarchy' is some kind of omnipresent invisible force, while sexism gets a lot more complicated than that – I'm not sure I'd consider Bachmann part of "the patriarchy". And there are certainly plenty of feminists who do act as if all men are out to get them or something.
I don't blame people at all for questioning the label either. If feminism is simply believing in equality of the sexes, you might as well consider arch-conservatives to be feminist. "I believe in equal rights, but women should be socially encouraged to stay at home.", "I do believe in equality, but I don't think pressuring women to be feminine makes them inferior." And so on…everyone believes in some vague idea of equality. And if you're going to define 'feminism' as whatever you consider equality to be…shit's gonna blow up. No other label has had as much tearing apart and stretching out to mean virtually anything. Can't wait for an argument over whether a woman liking blue is feminist.
And then when feminists start to jump down a person's throat the minute he/she displays any hesitancy over the label…fuck that shit. Then when the anti-sex-work ones disregard the experiences of women being beaten up by patriarchical authorities for showing legs in other countries, while bitching about how sex workers are playing into patriarchy norms…that's when I say feminism can go fuck itself and die. I'm too anti-sexist to be one.
There's certainly a lot of fail in the feminist movement and a lot of criticism to be pointed at them. I know and respect quite a few of avowed non-feminists. However there's a difference between that, and labeling all feminists as one way or the other.
Well db0, why don't you tell us what you think the goal of feminism is.
Female emancipation
Fine, but what does that MEAN?
Effort for females to achieve equal rights and opportunities as males, as well as remove systematic oppression such as the rape culture.
What are these rights and opportunities?
Sorry Francois, but I don't have time for your Socratic method at this point. Perhaps another time.
No… you are stopping here because you know very well where I am leading. Don't play games with us…
Ah Francois, always so vainglorious about your own intelligence…
No, I'm not stopping because I'm afraid of your super arguments. I'm stopping because I don't have time. And now I'm further stopping because you're acting like an ass again.
So according to you, being able to identify logical contradictions is arrogance? Whatever, dude.
No, but presuming you will identify logical contradictions is.
Your presumptiousness betrays your arrogance, not your ability.
I don't know about that… I think if the majority of a movement going by a label sucks, I'll judge people that still use the label to some extent, even if they don't suck as much.
I don't find that the majority of feminism sucks, qua feminism. They suck as people for occasionally holding some other shitty opinions, but those don't necessarily come from feminism.
Look at it this way, there's quite alot of fail in the anarchist movement as well. Manarchists, people co-opting the name, complete racial fail and so on. Does this describe the whole movement? Or this is an example of human imperfection?
Sure, you might say that in this way, we can excuse the MRM as well, but the difference imho is that MRAs not only seem to harbor the worst kind of misogyny in their ranks, but that their movement has inherently reactionary tactics and rhetoric, even if their stated goals are about equality.
Well you'd have to define what you mean by 'feminism' first before saying that the 'bad' ideas don't necessarily come from it. Besides, you could argue that about anything, that the people suck, not the ideology. Happens all the time when arguing against religion.
I don't think anarchism has as nearly much fail – the 'National Anarchists', etc. are far more of a minority within, than the shitty fems (anti-sex-work fems and moderates, fems that just want women to have the power to oppress, etc.) are within 'feminism'. But give me a call when the majority of anarchists start bickering in the mainstream about whether milking the State is anarchist or not. Maybe when a fair deal of the anarchist movement becomes like Jim Davidson, and then accuses me of being statist/capitalist for being hesitant over calling myself one…
I define feminism as striving for female emancipation. I don't really think that feminism has that much fail either so as to characterize the whole movement. And while there are certainly misguided female supremacists or honest-to-cthulhu misandrists, the samples I've seen are very few and far between, and not the common occurence I see in MRA circles, where misogyny and female bashing is the norm and accepted.
OTOH, egregiously shitty positions of feminists, are more likely to be called out from the others, at least in my experience. Sure, there is quite a bit of fail in the intersectionality of oppression (eg, see racial and trangender super fails that happen), but this very much true for anarchist circles just as well.
Well, like I said before, I'm pretty sure most conservatives also think they're for female emancipation 'cause they don't want women in burkas. And what annoys the fuck out of me is when I see sex-positive feminists having no problem regarding anti-sex-work people as feminist just because they think they're for equality, but not the conservatives.
And I don't really think you can dispute that the vast majority of fems just want more women in power. Or that feminism historically has been mostly sex-negative, and pretty racist and transphobic, etc. I never see anything from feminists today calling out the suffragists for racism – instead practically all you get is white feminists talking about how suffragism was a victory, thoroughly ignoring how some suffragists made black women march at the back if at all, or that black women couldn't vote for several more decades in some states. (Not that I care about voting or suffragism personally.)
Why anyone would want to associate themselves with the label is beyond me, especially when you don't even need the label to be against sexism.
It's not what people think, it's what they actually do and advocate. Conservative actions betray sexism in treating women as weak, or not allowing them to control their own body. Feminist fail is in not dealing with the intersectionality of oppression correctly. I.e. Conservatives are antithetical to female emancipation, while feminist just fail at other aspects of social justice.
As for anti-sex people, I don't know much about their theory, but from what I've read, it's not a caricature. They actually have arguments behind them for what kind of sex-work they oppose and why. It's not OK to control female bodies through the state of course, but anti-sex-work has been used in many political movements, even anarchists did it.
Also, you can't denounce feminism for not being anarchist (i.e. striving of equality within capitalism). If so, you should reject all social justice movements which are not from an anarchist perspective. From Anti-racism to LGBT.
And yes, feminism has been racist and transphobic, this is not something to ignore, but something to learn from and improve from.
I associate with the label because I agree with the core tenet of female emancipation, and I don't consider the movement a monolith.
So I guess when sex-negative fems act as if sex workers are all brainwashed by the patriarchy (and many of them do), they're not treating women as weak and unable to form their own ideas. Or when they advocate banning or discouraging sex work (with or without the state) they're somehow not trying to control certain females' bodies and choices.
To some extent, there is somewhat a point about the other social justice movements, but I find anti-racist and LGBT movements tend to focus quite a bit more on the cultural attitudes as opposed to power. I'm not a liberal either, although I have the same goals as liberals – I don't associate myself much with them partially because of how the majority of those people want to achieve those goals.
I'm not saying feminism is a monolith, in fact what I am arguing is the exact opposite – that it's been stretched so far to be just about meaningless.
Depends on what exactly they oppose, why they oppose it and the how they propose to go about doing it. You can't univerally claim that it's about controlling women's bodies without context. That's like saying that because anarchists want to abolish wage slavery, they are trying to control workers. Or because abolitionists wanted to abolish slavery, they were claiming that black people couldn't form their own ideas about being voluntary slaves.
<quote>Most wide-spanning political ideas and social concepts get stressed to this point. From Capitalism, to Anarchism to Feminism. But there's always a core ideal inside, from the Capitalist mode of production (i.e. wage slavery) to opposition to mutual and & direct action, to emancipation of females respectively. How is that meaningless? </quote>
Like I said, there is always some dispute within ideologies, but *never as much as within 'feminism'.* Feminism means whatever the fuck the 'right' people want it to mean. You'll find people arguing over whether just about *anything* is feminist or not.
Anarchism does have debates within – but when a good deal of anarchists start arguing ridiculous shit like using state roads isn't anarchist, or that pulling someone out of the way of a car makes you a ruler…then maybe I'll stop associating myself with it.
<quote>Depends on what exactly they oppose, why they oppose it and the how they propose to go about doing it. You can't univerally claim that it's about controlling women's bodies without context. That's like saying that because anarchists want to abolish wage slavery, they are trying to control workers. Or because abolitionists wanted to abolish slavery, they were claiming that black people couldn't form their own ideas about being voluntary slaves. </quote>
Well then you probably haven't spoken much with the anti-sex-work people. There is some diversity there, but just a FYI, it's not all about trying to end sexism in the sex industry. Many of them find all sex work/porn (including that freely made by women) to be oppressive because it reinforces the sex object view and thus rape… Kinda like how some fems used to support Prohibition because they believed drinking led to rape.
There's extreme views in every ideology and if I take you at your word that they are really not nuanced at all about opposing sex trade, then they are likely to be in the extreme minority among feminists. Most people who advocate such things are a special brand of radical feminists who generally hold such views that most mainstream feminist prefer to distance themselves from them, so I'd say that they are as repressentative of feminists as Primmies are from Anarchism.
And if you haven't seen extreme ideas from Anarchists, you haven't been looking deep enough. Take the aforementioned Anarcho-Primitivists. The shit they support is much of the time mind-boggling. Do you distance yourself from Anarchism now as well? And what about many lifestyle Anarchists, who will absolutely tell you that you are contributing to oppression for driving a car, or working as a wage slave? Will you distance yourself from Anarchism now?
And if you distance yourself from any ideology just because it has extremists, where does it leave you?
I honestly don't see this much dispute within Feminism as you claim. Surely not any less than I see within Anarchism.
When 97% of anarchists are Chomskyites, at least a quarter being primitivists, with constant arguments in the mainstream about whether milking statism is anarchist, and a lot of anarchists accuse reluctant people of being authoritarian…then yeah, I would distance myself.
Like I said earlier, you could also argue the same thing for the term liberal. I shouldn't let the sucky statist liberals dissuade me from it, as long as I agree with basic liberal goals.
Again, I'm not rejecting an ideology on the basis that there are kooks within. I reject it when it becomes practically defined by those kooks. And 'feminism' just makes me plainly uncomfortable.
I disagree that feminists have so many extremists that they're defined by them. RadFems are in the small minority.
It's not just the rad fems, it's the "women in power" ones that certainly do make up the vast majority. That's why I was comparing them to Chomskyites.
It's not the sole reason I'm uncomfortable with 'feminism', but it contributes to it.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the "women in power" ones. You mean feminists that think just in terms of the capitalist system, i.e. just allowing women to become the oppressors as well?
Yeah, the ones where the main goal is just to get women in political power positions, economic as well I suppose.
(The majority of 'feminism' also appeals much more to white, Western, middle-class cis people. And for a reason. I'm more supportive of less-privileged women distancing from it, especially when I see the amount of privilege ignorance within. I have less issues with black and multiracial feminism, women's rights movements in eastern countries, etc.)
Yeah, that's a valid criticism of mainstream privileged liberal feminism. But then again, that's primarily a criticism of liberalism rather feminism imho.
I too support criticism of liberal feminism from other marginalized perspectives in fact and I don't have anything against such people rejecting the label. However there's a lot of people there who still use it as well.
I still think the label is useful as a cohesive point for people striving for female emancipation, regardless of how the rest of their perspective is skewed.
So in the end, while liberal feminism (like most liberal ideologies) is flawed, I do not see so many feminists struggling especially for goals like "more women in power". If anything, my experience has been mostly that core issues seem to be mostly about fighting rape culture, promoting body acceptance, dismantling patriarchy and so on. These are all worthy goals that almost all feminist I've seen struggle for.
Yeah, I suppose I don't care too much if people use the label as long as they don't pressure me, which is unfortunately the case with the majority, such as implying I'm afraid to use it because of stereotypes, etc.
Personally a fair deal of my experiences with feminists have been with the more radical ones (some sex-positive, but still hellbent over the idea that the world won't be perfect until everyone declares themselves a feminist), and the more moderate ones aren't as obsessed about the label.
I'm still not comfortable at all with it though, and I've never been. In a way declaring myself not a feminist lets me single out the ones I don't want to try dealing with.
This.
I have never met a feminist who is anti sex-worker. I have met a few who are anti sex-work. The difference is that we don't blame women who are in the field and don't demand that they themselves make changes. Our entire society as a whole must change, where the root causes of objectification and sexualization of both women and men need to be eradicated. This does not come about by banning porn or prostitution, and I don't know anybody, feminist or otherwise, who would argue that it does.
As for feminists being "sex-negative," I suggest you take a look at the anarcha-feminist movement. While I consider myself an anarcha-feminist, I tire of a prevailing obsession that I see in that community with pornography and prostitution and their view of these institutions as empowering women. So you would probably fit right in with them, Noor. I'm also frankly exhausted by their accusations that I am a prude for opposing oppression and objectification, which is very different from opposing sexual relationships and sex as an act. And no, opposition and banning are not the same things. I support the legalisation of prostitution in every country. I am an anarchist, after all.
Most wide-spanning political ideas and social concepts get stressed to this point. From Capitalism, to Anarchism to Feminism. But there's always a core ideal inside, from the Capitalist mode of production (i.e. wage slavery) to opposition to mutual and & direct action, to emancipation of females respectively. How is that meaningless?