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Men's Rights Activists Call For Boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road
ideonexus writes: Aaron Clarey, author of the blog Return of Kings and prominent figure in the Men's Rights Movement, is calling for a boycott of George Miller's new edition to the Mad Max franchise "Mad Max: Fury Road," calling the film a "Trojan Horse feminists and Hollywood leftists will use to (vainly) insist on the trope women are equal to men in all things..." and citing the fact that "Vagina Monologues" author Eve Ensler was brought in to coach the actresses on playing sex slaves who escape a warlord's possession. Critics have been applauding the film, which currently scores 98% on RottenTomatoes.
This happens a lot on IMDB. The first people to see a movie are usually hardcore fans who have been anticipating it for a long time, and will enjoy it no matter what. So there's a sampling bias at the start, then normal people start watching the movie and the average rating goes down.
Men's rights and white power groups and other groups that "fight" for the rights of an already empowered majority exist only because they choose to ignore history.
There are no such thing as "group" rights. If a man is denied custody of his children during a divorce procedure, that isn't some how okay because his grandmother was denied a job. Whining about a movie is silly, but MRAs have some valid points about discrimination against men in family law. For instance, most domestic violence laws are written as if men are the sole abusers, when most DV is actually perpetrated by women. In California, the police can only arrest the "dominant" (physically stronger) partner, regardless of who was the initiator or the aggressor. So a woman can attack her husband, and he goes to jail.
Disclaimer: I haven't seen the movie.
P.S. have any of these idiots ever heard of the Streisand Effect?
Yes, that is what they are hoping for. You had never heard of this group before, and now you have. Achievement unlocked (for them).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Some of the points the men's right movement are valid and worth debating, such as disparity in prison sentencing and child custody. However, this Return of Kings guy is a fucking moron.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Why is this on Slashdot? Has Slashdot become this clickbaity? Secondly, Charlize Theron has said herself that Mad Max is "an incredibly feminist action film" and "It's a total empowerment of women,". Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wir...
I've also heard the synopsis of the film, and it sounds like Charlize Theron's character is the main character in the film and women come to the rescue in the film. It sounds like it really sidelines Mad Max in an attempt to push a political agenda, I liked the Aliens movies, but it wasn't a bait and switch like Mad Max appears to be -- we knew that Sigourney Weaver was the star.
Um..
Just exactly when are you going to stop helping females and take your foot of the back of young men? The ratio is 60/40 now-- when will it be "enough" to stop having hundreds of groups helping females but few helping males?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07...
Most institutions of higher learning, except engineering schools, now have a female edge, with many small liberal arts colleges and huge public universities alike hovering near the 60-40 ratio. Even Harvard, long a male bastion, has begun to tilt toward women.
"The class we just admitted will be 52 percent female," said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions.
Women now outnumber men two to one at places like the State University of New York at New Paltz, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Baltimore City Community College.
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seriously--- I'm retired and don't really give a shit- I'm not a "men's" activist-- but I see in my gaming groups and in my in-laws relationships how the males are suffering while the females are still getting assistance and help even tho things are well past 50/50 (i.e. "fair") now.
At the last place I worked before I retired, 70% of managers were females and they openly discriminated in favor of females for team leader positions the ratio was 80% female to 20% male. They did things which would be illegal if a man did it. The law wasn't being equally enforced.
People hire people "like" them unless the government gives them a reality check. Women are equally able to discriminate, behave in a prejudicial fashion, and abuse the power of their positions.
The area where it is imbalanced in favor of males is at the very top. Among 60 year old males- the percentages are m ore like 80% male and 20% female. Where we need affirmative action is at the top- not in the bottom or even in the middle any more.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Maybe not in terms of the planet's population, but in many industries and in positions of power and authority, men are still a majority.
...and those men comprise an exceedingly miniscule percentage of the male population. The rest of us in the 99.999th percentile aren't as "empowered" as those guys.
BTW, males DO outnumber females worldwide, but females outnumber males in the vast majority of the developed world.
Good grief, dude. Not everything has some deep underlying 'message'.
Well, I would agree with you...except, they brought in the author of the 'Vagina Monologues", Eve Ensler, to consult on making the film. You do not bring her in unless you are putting in some deep underlying message which she would approve of. For that matter, Eve Ensler would not have consented to consult on the film unless she agreed with the message.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I think this is the first time I've seen "MRA" in a slashdot headline (I could have missed some, but I do check reasonably often). It's certainly the first time Return of Kings attention-getting trollish posts (including stuff like "why girls with short hair are damaged" and "why to date a girl with an eating disorder") has baited slashdot, that I'm aware of.
But the bigger concern is- is slashdot going to really enter this territory? This is hugely controversial stuff. We've already seen "feminism Friday" become a thing- normally some genderwarrior-bait story near the end of the week, normally told from a feminist perspective- sometimes legit, sometimes not. One piece that is largely controversial on slashdot is the "should we bend over backwards to get girls in tech" thing, obviously built in controversy for a bunch of professional tech people, and we see it *over and over again*.
But this is beyond that. You would expect people to have differing opinions on that stuff, and whether you are opposed or in favor, it's pretty relevant. Random gender warring stories, such as this, are not.
I'll also point this out: the editorial staff seems to be pretty strongly on one side. It may be difficult to give MRAs a fair shake, but certainly, by calling RoK an MRA website, and by linking that as the first thing ever, they aren't even fucking trying. This would be like calling out "feminists" and then linking to some really ludicrous 70s-edge position as being the standard-bearer. A Voice For Men's website is probably a better place to start if you want to actually go find non-strawmen points to analyze / refute- they at least self identify as some version of MRA, not some reactionary / PUA crossbreed like RoK.
The people who discuss these gender things online tend to be full-on soldiers, on both sides. They will do or say anything to slam the other side, they will dox, they will make false claims, they are fighting a fucking war. And you want the slashdot commenters to be in on this? Gross.
No, it isn't a good movie. Not anywhere near a good movie. Actually kinda a dumb movie. It does have lots of car chases and explosions to distract you from the fact that it is a bad movie. I'm sure it will be successful - nobody eats at McDonalds for quality food but they still eat there.
People like you always crack me up. Mad Max: Fury Road has an audience approval rating hovering around 90% and in the end that's what counts and it's what makes a movie good, when most of the people who watched it liked what they saw. Anything else is irrelevant. Some of the best movies I have ever seen got dumped on by critics even though the audiences loved them. I'm sometimes tempted to hypothesise that in order to judge the watchability of a film the best way is to find somebody like you or some opinionated snob of a film critic like Leonard Martin and watch only the stuff you guys don't like.
That's funny, but you make a really important point.
If there really is a "femininization" of culture going on, what does it say about masculinity that these men are pissing themselves and crying like giant titty babies?
Of the qualities that are traditionally thought of as "masculine", is throwing a tantrum because an action movie has important female characters among them? Is crapping on the floor in fury when a woman is hired in your department among them? How about completely losing your shit for eight months because some woman criticized your favorite video game? Is that masculine behavior.
I have to wonder what kind of role models this relatively young group of MRAs grew up with.
Let's look at how one of the best-known MRAs, Paul Elam, describes his own conversion to the cause of "men's rights":
Got that? His mother forced him to take his diarrhea medicine and he realized it was a woman's world. Jesus wept.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That sounds kind of awesome, tbh.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh stop.
To suggest that being dismissive of some wuss whinging about a MAD MAX movie contributing to the gynocracy somehow means that I would therefore not care about a son (or anyone) being falsely accused of rape is the sort of histrionics that one might have, 60 years ago, attributed to an overreacting woman.
I'm not saying that the militant feminism hasn't gone too far (it has, but I submit that's symptomatic of the overwhelming force of political correctness generally, actually). What I'm saying is:
I directly dispute our culture's determination that "anything the feminine way" is the "right" way and anything "the male way" is some sort of pathology that needs to be corrected ASAP.
Part of classical masculinity is, to me: ...none of these are exemplified by men crying about the latest Mad Max film.
- if shit bothers you, you go fix it, you don't piss and moan over the fence to other people trying to gin up sympathy.
- lead by doing, not by "calling" for leadership
- there's nothing wrong with feeling emotions; there are places where displaying them is ridiculous or inappropriate
- be strong; understand some shit is trivial and not worth regarding. You give it power by whinging about it.
- understand that you are not a special snowflake
- you deserve only the respect you earn
-Styopa
No more so than any other brand.
Think of the people that read the Perry Rhodan, or the destroyer Novels. Mad Max as a brand has certain expectations. Both have been going on forever and are able to do so because they meet expectations. Mad Max has it's own expectations.
The setting is post Apocalyptic Australia.
There must be a group of people struggling towards the future.
They must be opposed by the forces of chaos and evil trying to plunge mankind deeper into darkness.
Then there is Max the rogue element driven by his loss. The tragic and flawed hero who stands against the darkness.
I don't care if they decided to make a movie with Charlize Theron as the action lead. I actually enjoyed Aeon Flux may have been one of the few people that did. The key is that when I went to see Aeon Flux I had a pretty good Idea of what I would be getting which was about a certain style and aesthetic. Many people complained the movie wasn't consistent with the cartoon but they miss the point that the cartoon was nowhere near self consistent.
So if this isn't a Mad Max movie, that's fine but it is false advertising.
Part of being an adult is, to me: ...none of these are exemplified by anyone crying about the latest Mad Max film.
- if shit bothers you, you go fix it, you don't piss and moan over the fence to other people trying to gin up sympathy.
- lead by doing, not by "calling" for leadership
- there's nothing wrong with feeling emotions; there are places where displaying them is ridiculous or inappropriate
- be strong; understand some shit is trivial and not worth regarding. You give it power by whinging about it.
- understand that you are not a special snowflake
- you deserve only the respect you earn
FTFY.
There's no reason why men should be considered as the only sex to be able to exhibit these traits w/o detracting from their identity as male or female.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.