Men's Rights Memes Episode 25: Kill All Idiots

Hello and welcome to episode 25 of Men's Rights Memes, the show where I murder antifeminists. Not with weapons or anything, but rather with unassailable logic and actual facts. Without further ado, here is this episode's offending image.

Okay, let me back up. This image itself contains nothing offensive. Not to me, anyway. What I want to argue against here is how some people react to these tweets and the ideas contained within. Namely, the false equivalence fallacy. I'm surprised it took us this long to get to this one, to be honest. Basically, the entitled, whining assholes on the Internet really, really want to be oppressed. They will use tweets like those above to claim that the Left and the marginalized groups they support are just as bigoted as the right-wing reactionaries they claim to despise so much. If our universe were completely lacking in any kind of order or common sense, this might be valid, though even then it would be a stretch.

Here's the thing, guys. Power structures exist. White people and, yes, men, are the dominant group in power right now. This has, for the most part, always been the case. There is a tremendous difference between being able to pass laws that effect marginalized people and being mean on the Internet. Mustafa might be able to hurt your feelings, but she cannot pass laws that make it okay to pay you less for an honest day's work. There is an important power dynamic at play that people who make this argument seem to be blind to, and it's baffling.

Further, these kinds of things are simply jokes. I'm sure that statistically there are a few people who do take hash-tags like this seriously, but they are such a small section of the population that their not even worth acknowledging. I know that they're small because there has never been a murder based on Kill All White Men, whereas the number of racist hate crimes against black people is through the fucking roof.

The point is that Kill All Men was created for the express purpose of getting a rise out of reactionaries. It's about exposing them for the blithering thin-skinned idiots that they actually are. And, you know, you're not exactly proving them wrong here.

Men's Rights Memes Episode 24: Check Your Privilege

Hello and welcome to episode 24 of Men's Rights Memes, the show where I jump in front of an oncoming train. Well, no, I really just make rebuttals to the bullshit arguments that Men's Rights Activists make on a daily basis, but sometimes it feels like I'm killing myself. Without further ado, here is this episode's offending image.

Look, I agree that the actual phrase 'check your privilege' is often sanctimonious and unhelpful, but the principle is sound. Now, the person who made this meme seems to think that the aforementioned principle entails silencing dissenting opinions in order to further a narrative and create some kind of echo chamber in which you are always correct. This is a misunderstanding of the phrase, and a very simple one. I don't think you can fault the creator of the meme for not getting what this means, as this confuses a lot of people. It confused me at one point, too.

In order to illustrate my point, I'd like to take you on a little journey. A journey...of the mind. Let's say that there are two people. One of them is a layperson, confused about how open heart surgery works. He decides to ask the second person, a doctor, to explain it to him. Just as the doctor finishes up his explanation, a third person swoops in with a smug look on his face and proclaims that what the doctor said was wrong, and that he can accurately tell the first person how open heart surgery actually works. He is asked to prove his credentials as a cardiologist, and is unable to do so. In fact, he isn't a doctor at all.

So, the question remains. If a person who is not an open heart surgeon presumes to correct one who is, and both present their theories, which are you more likely to trust. If you said that you would place stock in the surgeon rather than the other person, you are a hundred percent correct. If you wouldn't trust a non-doctor to explain open heart surgery, why would you trust a non-marginalized person to talk about the experiences of marginalized people? Do you think that telling a non-surgeon to stop talking about how surgery works is akin to censorship? 

The bottom line is, only women can have true authority when they speak about women's issues, so listen to them. Think seriously about what they have to say, rather than dismissing them out of hand. Trust them.

Men's Rights Memes Episode 23: Affirmative Inaction

Hello and welcome to episode 23 of Men's Rights Memes, the show where I illuminate the trolls and general scumfucks that make up the Men's Rights Movement, and hopefully turn them to stone in the process. Without further ado, here is this episode's offending image.

Okay, I'm gonna level with you here. Affirmative action is a very difficult subject, especially when it comes to things like quotas. For a long time, I was vehemently against affirmative action. Then again, i was also an antifeminist right-wing asshole, so there you go.

Over time, I've listened to arguments from the other side, and done some actual research instead of just blindly swallowing the faulty rhetoric I'd been spoon-fed by family and culture. Sadly, there are still some people who have yet to do this, either by choice or because of ignorance. But I have seen the light, so I know that others can do so as well. I hope the following argument will help them do so.

One argument against affirmative action is that it is, in itself, a form of discrimination. Hell, the ideas inherent in affirmative action go by another name elsewhere: Positive Discrimination! Therefore, it must be bad, because discrimination is bad. People who make this argument often feel as though they've trapped people like me in the corner. We say that discrimination is bad, so it'd be a double standard for us to endorse things like quotas.

And, I suppose, they're technically correct. If a man and a woman apply to a STEM job with the same resume, the woman is more likely to get the job. But we have to consider that, for a very long time, the reverse was true. Men were favored for jobs in STEM and other fields, and in some cases, they still are. Thus, affirmative action for women and minorities does nothing more than level the playing field.

The counter to this is that it doesn't really matter who takes the job, because both the man and the woman have the same qualifications. People who make this argument claim to only give a shit about the quality of the work being done, rather than who does the work.

That's an admirable claim, really. But work does not exist in a vacuum. People do not exist in a vacuum. The bottom line is that there are certain groups of people who are oppressed in the world. Ignoring that fact, or choosing not to believe it, does not make it untrue. When you give people the opportunity to educate themselves, you allow them to exit the poverty they might have grown up in. But even then, you do not guarantee that they will get work in their chosen field. That's where Affirmative Action comes in. When you give, say, a woman the opportunity to be a scientist, you show other women, and even young girls, that it is possible to follow in her footsteps.

Affirmative Action is only about giving people something to look up to, about inspiring them to do their best. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can be against that.