Feminism

[Twig]

Haha oh man I love that that exists.

[castorp]

Aww, silly stupid people, cute! They turned it around, probably because they have no idea what they are talking about.

I hope they get educated!

[Orv]

Any rational arguments will be shouted down by people genuinely espousing "mens rights", Don't get me wrong, the portrayal of men in video games is pretty stupid as a whole, but these people are idiots.

http://www.reddit.com/r/mensrights

Have a browse. If you haven't ended it all after the first 10 topic titles, run.

[Laxan]

Man, that is awful.

Just the use of the word misandry brings it into the delusional MRA world. (I think it says something that the forum spellcheck doesn't recognise the word "misandry").

I think I would ok with a series called (or about) "Stupid Cliché's We'll Make Fun of in Videos". As long as it didn't have that "Men are systematically discriminated against" undertone and was more just about TVTropes in video form.

EDIT: SO BRAVE

[James]

For fuck's sake

EDIT: In retrospect, perhaps this outburst was ambiguous. I was expressing frustration at some men's complete inability to see beyond their own experiences and concerns, and their refusal to accept that men being subject to some stereotypes is really not the same thing as the systematic oppression and dehumanization of women, or whatever it should be called. This expression of frustration was in no way insightful, helpful or interesting, and for that I apologize. I tend to treat forum threads as casual conversations; I suppose this thread (or what this thread should be) could be better characterized as a discussion.

[Orv]

They genuinely think they're standing up to a corrupt matriarchal society. It boggles my mind.

[Lu]

Us men have it tough, don't we? I'm glad these brave souls are standing up to the discrimination we have to endure.

[Roderick]

I wish I were a woman so I also had the right to complain!

[Nappi]

I know that women had it really rough at one point in the history, but in trying to balance the situation we (they?) accidentally (on purpose?) tipped the scales way off in the other direction.

[Orv]

Us men have it tough, don't we? I'm glad these brave souls are standing up to the discrimination we have to endure.

Daily, daily I ask the woman I live with to pass the salt. She's always so polite about it, it infuriates me! She's oppressing my right to be an incredible jackass.

These people are a waste of air.

[Nachimir]

Oh dear. There is a bunch of stuff wrong with male stereotypes, but these guys are not the people to examine it. I hope they go way overboard and start throwing terms like feminazi around; at least then it'll be obvious to everyone but the converted.

Other news: Republican Mike Callton can't deal with hearing the word "vagina", so state reps Lisa Brown and Barb Bryum have been banned from speaking in the Michigan House of Representatives.

[ThunderPeel2001]

"Baby it's cold outside" is super skeezy. The expression "slip someone a mickey" dates back to well before the song was written, and even if that line is interpreted as the best case of a man trying to get a woman really drunk so her resistance will break down and he can fuck her… that's still creepy. Manipulating people into doing things they don't want to is a non-trivial thing to do to others, and never just a bit of fun.

? Nowhere in the song does it say, "I'll slip you a Mickey".

The song is a romantic song. The female part isn't sung by a woman in distress, it's sung by a woman who is attracted to a man. The inference is that they're in love. You can tell this by how it's being sung by the female part. It's not glorifying, nor promoting, "rape culture". A guy drooling and coercing a woman who's not attracted to him is repugnant, but it's never implied in the performance or the lyrics that that's the case.

Same goes for "Girl I Want To Make You Sweat". If you're listening to that song and thinking that the woman is crying out in distress, that's in your mind.

I'll never forgive the person who resurrected this thread.

[Nachimir]

It's not having an opinion GONE MAD!!!!, it's not a song about rape; it is a song that reflects an element of rape culture, which is that oblique references to reducing a woman's ability to resist advances are considered funny or harmless. It's not such a stretch to say that. Let us end this derail.

[Orv]

I think you're finding meaning that isn't there, but whatever.

[MrHoatzin]

I think you're looking for meaning that isn't there, but whatever.

I think you're being obnoxious as fuck, but whatever.

[Orv]

I think you're being obnoxious as fuck, but whatever.

Care to extrapolate? Do you, perchance, agree with /r/mensrights?

[MrHoatzin]

I find your additions to this conversation to be all over the place. Also, men have feelings too, you know.

[Orv]

I find your additions to this conversation to be all over the place. Also, men have feelings too, you know.

I do that when I'm low on sleep, I apologize.

Look, I'm not trying to imply that men don't have feelings, but what I am getting at is that people who post in places like /r/mensrights and seriously believe what they're saying are completely out of their gourds. Entirely, utterly batshit. Like I said earlier, yes, men are portrayed unrealistically in games as well, typically as 95% muscle 150% suave/gruff as the situation calls for, and that's bad as well. However, there's no matriarchal conspiracy to make all men whatever insane theory they've come up with lately.

I apologize for the inconsistency, it's basically just me trying to be funny late at night, and I'm bad at that when I'm fully rested.

I'd much rather this topic just close.

[youmeyou]

Stale and stagnant character design? Clearly Misandry at work!

[youmeyou]

http://emmyc.tumblr.com/post/25123828161

[toblix]

While this is a super-interesting topic, I too get the feeling we ought to let this thread just sink. Most of us are probably more or less on the same page with regards to the actual topic, and it seems almost like the real debate or conflict lies in how to go about discussing the topic, where the boundaries go and what things are called. Those too are important and interesting things to discuss, but there seems to be an unfortunate, highly combustible combination of tempers and views that flares up around them, surprisingly quickly escalating and threatening to engulf everything in a vile fireball of anger and quotes.

So, to make sure everyone forgets this, everyone should post that they wish this thread would disappear. For the record, I'm against permanently deleting threads, unless they're spam, or embarrass me.

[MrHoatzin]

I was kidding about the feelings bit. I have no sympathy for the MRA bullshit.

You need to stop shutting the conversation down. You can just go away, dude. No one is compelling you to hang around here.

[toblix]

Okay.

edit: Just one more thing before I'm out of everyone's hair:

? Nowhere in the song does it say, "I'll slip you a Mickey".

The song is a romantic song. The female part isn't sung by a woman in distress, it's sung by a woman who is attracted to a man. The inference is that they're in love. You can tell this by how it's being sung by the female part. It's not glorifying, nor promoting, "rape culture". A guy drooling and coercing a woman who's not attracted to him is repugnant, but it's never implied in the performance or the lyrics that that's the case.

Same goes for "Girl I Want To Make You Sweat". If you're listening to that song and thinking that the woman is crying out in distress, that's in your mind.

I agree with this, and wish I could formulate my thoughts like that.

[Roderick]

Concerning the reggae song. It's possible she is, in fact, 'crying out' in something other than distress. But he doesn't sing 'cry out', he sings 'cry'. Overwhelmingly, that means tears.

In the hypothetical situation where I am performing the sex act and the lady starts to cry, my immediate response would not be to push it, push it some more, but ask if something is the matter.

However, I may be a little negative here on account of how much I want this song to be ripped out of our collective culture.

[Sal Limones]

You know what, I don't want this thread to disappear. It has occasional flareups of people posting stuff that contributes nothing, as well as occasional derails and outright hostile or unintentionally sexist posts, but it also contains a lot of exploration and explanation of feminist theory, destruction of harmful preconceptions, news, and other good things.

My post earlier regarding my wishes for this thread to die was entirely a reaction to the feeling of unpleasantness caused by Arguing On The Internet, but I think we can all be civilized and reasonable.

If you don't want to post here, you don't have to post here. Nobody's making you and you can very easily navigate around this thread without touching it.

Also, please don't just voice your personal feelings about a thing and imply that everyone else's experiences regarding that thing are not going to change them. That's not contributing to the discussion. If you're open to listening to and internalizing other points of view, especially those of minorities that are directly affected by these things in a way that you are not, then cool, but otherwise you're just being contrary.

If you wanna come here and say NO THAT IS NOT SO please at least explain your point and listen to other points of view. You might be wrong or we might be wrong and surely whoever is wrong wants to be corrected, right? I know I would. I want to learn.

Also please stop talking about that Christmas song, it seriously is not important.

PS I'm not talking about any specific incidents here, except for that song, and the calls for thread-death.