One of our favorite (and our most strongly upvoted) commenters at AVfM is a mysterious fellow named “AndyBob.” Funny, bitingly insightful, a joy to read – it is always worthwhile to slow down and read his thoughts carefully – and more than once.
Every now and then we like to round up some of Andy’s work for your enjoyment, and ours. So gather round, boys and girls. Bring your cups of hot chocolate and pillows; Andybob, the Minister of Truth, has come to visit. And when he speaks, everything that crawls on the ground or goes bump in the night falls to stillness in the shadows; hoping, praying, ne’re to be seen.
For this edition of Andybob’s Corner, AB speaks to:
Thoughts on Occidental
“I expect this stuff from Jezebel, but something like this coming from a college sociology professor is just frightening.” Sungecko says
Not frightening, just typical.
What else can someone saturated in feminist ideology possibly say about the spamming, other than the usual shaming language about ‘little boys’, victim-speak about silencing women and some kind of vacuous reference to male privilege? Being a feminist, she doesn’t believe that false allegations even exist, which is why doesn’t feel the need to address them.
Feminists cannot address any of the issues of the MHRM with anything other than dishonesty, obfuscation and snark. Sociology professors are no different – they just use bigger words and slightly more accurate punctuation. These vanguards of organized feminism are among the principal authors of their all-too-familiar narrative. It is beginning to fail them because they never expected it to be challenged by rational humanitarians, like John Hembling.
Feminists are now floundering to contrive an emergency contingency plan, which so far seems to consist of bribing the SPLC to slander MHRAs, and waiting for David Futrelle to come up with a cunning plan. In other words, they’re fucked. Until this fact becomes apparent to people other than ourselves, they’ve elected to double-down on their wheezy old narrative.
It is narrative which is starting to make people wonder what little boys ever did to make feminists hate them so much.
On having patience
I was raised in a time and place that taught children that patience was virtue, goodness was its own reward, and you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Wonderful edicts to live by when those who participate in your life share them, or you somehow get trapped in a Disney movie.
Unfortunately, these edicts can work rather dangerously against you when you come into contact with certain types of persons – like serial killers, sociopaths and feminists. They can only perceive virtues as weaknesses to be exploited and manipulated to their advantage. It is difficult enough to successfully negotiate the real world with this knowledge – without it, you’re done for.
Well-informed MHRAs who genuinely care about the rights and welfare of men and boys, understand that the time for patience has long passed – and not just with feminist ideologues. It includes patience with hand-wringing tone warriors, armchair quarterbacks and those recovering white knights who can’t quite bring themselves to throw the last of their jousting utensils on the garbage heap where they belong.
Paul Elam has always understood that these self-proclaimed allies are almost as much of a hindrance to the MHRM as those feminists across the globe who are busily scribbling anti-male legislation as we type. It is never a surprise when Dr Elam loses his patience with people who contribute nothing but pointless distractions that the MHRM simply cannot afford. Our issues are too urgent for such luxuries.
Accusations of impatience stinks of Code Red Shaming Language – impatient = angry. It reminds me of Chanty Binx: “Be patient, feminists are working your issues. Anyway…” When you start to remind MHRAs of that charmless chanteuse, don’t be surprised when your value to the MHRM gets questioned by a man who may lose a little of his composure.
“When it comes to dealing with self-elected but non-functional directors of matters in which they will not share in the work, I pledge to tell you to fuck off with a little more courtesy than I did in 2013.” Paul Elam
A little more courtesy? Very little, I hope. Happy New Year you, and to all my fellow MHRAs who aren’t ‘bothered’ by Dr Elam’s passionate commitment one little bit.
Excusing irrationality
It has been more than twenty years since I have sought any kind of advice from women. That includes women I would describe as sensible and rational – I know a few. I came to realize that acting upon any advice offered to me by a woman would have invariably made whatever problems I have had, infinitely worse.
Their advice was always emotion-driven. Rather than offer ideas on how to resolve conflicts, reach accord and understanding, or simply calm troubled waters, they would invariably suggest inflammatory responses that relied heavily on acts of petty vengeance, violence, and an awful lot of name-calling.
Problems with the boss? Tell them to get fucked. Problems with a friend? Punch their lights out. Problems with a woman friend/colleague? Apologize, buy them chocolates and tell them they look pretty. Whatever the problem, acting on their advice – common sense always prevented me from doing so – would have had me fired, arrested, friendless, or turned into a spineless, vagina-worshiping lap dog, like Harris O’Malley.
You should have heard the howls of shock and dismay from a group of women when I recently let slip that me and my partner of more than a decade have never had an argument. I let them drone on about arguing being healthy, the importance of communication, and how sad that men have been socialized to bottle up our feelings – emotional retards that we are.
I explained that me and my partner handle our issues by sitting down and discussing them in a calm, honest and reasonable manner because that is the grown-up way to handle problems and conflicts in relationships. If an issue doesn’t warrant that much effort, we take it as an indication that it is either unimportant, or isn’t really a problem in the first place, so should be forgiven and forgotten.
They didn’t understand.
I didn’t expect them to. They made a lot of rancorous noises of course – how dare a man presume to know anything about relationships? I countered that I presumed nothing about any relationship other than my own. I did, however, point out that I was the only person at that table who had ever been in a successful relationship – and that they could make of that what they liked. The atmosphere turned sour, as it usually does when you call women out for talking crap, with some even storming out in a huffpo. Good.
I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. Being gay, I am often in close range of women discussing their ideas about relationships. It usually leaves me angry and sad about what straight men, like my twin brother, have to put up with.
Most women view intimate partner relationships as some kind of playground where they have permission to unleash their inner ‘crazy bitches’. Everyone, from their gal pals, to HuffPo hacks, have told them so. After all, who’s going to stop them? I can’t, and neither can the bewildered men who haplessly wander into these playgrounds, and find that they’ve been rigged like minefields. Their only sensible recourse is to escape while they still have their limbs – and their balls – intact.
Rational, fair, unselfish and sensible women have become an endangered species due to dwindling habitats – and feminism. Some have found a home at AVfM, toiling away in the Honey Badger enclosure and sammich mines. They are rightfully prized and respected. Unfortunately, they cannot, as yet, be cloned. As always, I salute them
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Many women enjoy acting crazy due to the adrenaline rush it infuses into their otherwise humdrum lives. Popular culture condones this behavior by conflating it with positive connotations of female empowerment and self-worth.
How many women do you see on reality TV shows proudly declaring, “I’m a diva” in order to explain away their selfish and entitled attitudes and actions? Obviously, “I’m a crazy bitch” doesn’t have the same self-affirming, warm & fuzzy ring to it.
Most women are actually quite ignorant of the densely tortured ideologies of academic gender feminists like Andrea Dworkin. Their understanding of feminism has been distilled into one central tenet: ‘I can act out however I like, and no-one is allowed to criticize me for it’. No wonder they accuse anyone who confronts them with, ‘No princess, you can’t act out however you like, and yes, I can criticize you for it’, of being a patriarchal oppressor – it sounds like Daddy, the rational voice of reason, admonishing spoilt, out-of-control toddlers.
Unfortunately, when those toddlers are actually grown women who have the full weight of society’s institutions behind them, we have to deal with legions of dangerous and potentially malevolent individuals. The damage they can, and do, cause to the men and women required to deal with them makes this phenomenon a very serious issue.
It is very telling that so many women, and men like Mr O’Malley – whether or not they identify as feminists – demonize those of us who do examine our emotions before acting on them, as being stunted, buttoned-down, emotional retards that have tragically failed to evolve (into divas?). Feminists are people who drone on endlessly about emotional intelligence, without demonstrating the slightest understanding of what it actually is.
One of the reasons the MHRM struggles to communicate with feminists is that we are rational voices trying to reason with divas – otherwise known as crazy bitches.
Rebranding feminism
Attempts to re-brand feminism are doomed to fail for the same reason feminists cannot honestly address any of the key issues of the MHRM. Feminists are incapable of concealing their hatred of men and boys any longer than Jaclyn Friedman can keep her hands off a chocolate Danish. They just can’t help themselves. Even at their most restrained, their hatred oozes out like puss from a rancid boil. Contact with the tiniest prick has it spewing forth like projectile vomit.
That’s why I’m never without my industrial-strength scrubs – and lancing utensils.
The mind boggles over what might be pinned on Elle magazine’s ideas board. How are they going to turn lies, shaming, hypocrisy and violence into a glossy vision of fashion-forward loveliness? It’ll take more than a few complimentary perfume fold-outs to mask the stench emanating from this ideology’s hate-mongering bigotry.
Whatever monstrosity they send down the runway, we can rest assured that feminists will continue to respond to the MHRM with spectacular bad taste, ineptitude and someone else’s money.
Women being discriminated against in the workplace
Yet another piece of feminist propaganda that reeks of the desperation that has seeped into their public discourse. One can sense their struggle to keep their narrative on track in the face of mounting skepticism towards the core tenets of feminist ideology. This pitiful attempt to create a sense of national emergency based on the feelings of disgruntled women is particularly transparent. Judging by the comments attached to the article, people are beginning to see through it.
One of the biggest mistakes that feminists are making is that their assertions simply don’t correlate to people’s own experiences. Ask the women you know about their personal experiences with workplace bullying. They will tell you, very promptly, that other women are usually the culprits, and that men are just as likely to be their targets as women. Only an ideologue with an disintegrating agenda would try to tell fibs about such a universally acknowledged truth.
Workplace bullying is a very serious phenomenon which can have devastating effects on those who experience it. Another opportunity has been squandered to discuss an important issue honestly and seriously, because a feminist journalist decided that contributing to war-on-women hysteria was more important. They take the same wantonly irresponsible approach to other issues, especially domestic violence.
Many gender feminists, like those cited in the article, are quite explicit about their belief that any setbacks – in terms of salary and advancement – experienced by women who become mothers are due to the patriarchy’s desire to punish women for having wombs. I’m not making this up. This is actually the stated belief of many influential and highly placed Australian feminists who hold lucrative positions in publicly funded organizations.
Feminists have finally overreached themselves. It must be enormously frustrating for them to realize that people are starting to call them on the absurdity of their beliefs, as well as their vast sense of entitlement. If Emily Dugan thinks she’s helping them out with her article, then she’s as deluded as they are.
Reproductive rights for men
“When men are given the same rights as women to choose fatherhood, all the incentives to trap men and extract maximum resources without consequence will be eliminated.” Janet Bloomfield
Whenever you are introducing the key issues of the MHRM to women – from surly radfems to the merely curious – be sure to wear protective gear and stand well back when you get to bit about full reproductive rights for men. Otherwise, you could be scrubbing brain splatter off your favourite shirt for weeks.
If their heads haven’t exploded already, then raising this particular issue is always guaranteed to do the trick. I have yet to witness any response other than visceral hysteria, usually revolving around the idea that MHRAs just want to control women’s bodies. “You want to imprison women in baby factories so you can rape them and force them to have babies.”
Um, no. But thank you for your creative projection.
In stark contrast, most men just stare open-mouthed, as if someone’s switched a light on in their heads that they never knew was there. What they are experiencing is nothing short of a revelation. It isn’t difficult to determine which group has hitherto enjoyed a monopoly on reproductive rights and which has only known obligations and responsibilities.
The often bizarre and extreme responses of otherwise sensible women suggest that there is more at stake than the loss of power, control and the means to extort money from men. Underpinning their barely coherent rage is an almost palpable fear that the MHRM is attempting to encroach, not just on their autonomy, but on their very identities as women.
Perhaps Honey Badgers, like Janet Bloomfield, can acknowledge and accept male reproductive rights because their identities as women are more expansive and self-determined than those of women who have never explored and evaluated MHR issues.
In the same way, the articles and resources at AVfM have enabled male MHRAs to question, and ultimately enrich our notions of male identity. Men can be so much more than just disposable utilities. By the same token, one of the most positive, and least noted, benefits derived from exposure to AVfM is that it encourages us to have a greater appreciation and respect for the potential of women – a potential that is suffocated beneath the infantilizing baby blanket of feminism.
Reading the opinions of Camille Paglia and Honey Badgers like Janet Bloomfield reminds me that the best women are independent, free-range thinkers whose heads don’t explode when confronted with the concept that men’s rights are human rights. It gives me tremendous hope – for which I am grateful.
