Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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