#derailing 101

Community: ...y-yes we do. We've been talking about it all day.

Shills: Yeah but no one cares enough to DO something about it!!

Active community members: Are you not even going to acknowledge our efforts?

This is one of those things that I've been needing to write for awhile, because I see MRAs say the same ignorant crap over and over. There's a lot of that. Anyway.

"What rights do men have that women don't?"

Here you have an MRA declaring that the only rights that matter are the ones specifically coded into law. This is a derailing tactic, which is really all MRAs have. Don't get pulled into this bullshit.

Yeah, women are allowed to work now, and own property, and vote, hooray. But this is not all there is to life and this does not mean that women are on equal footing in Western society.

There are fundamental human rights that, if pressed, everyone will agree on. For example, people should have the right to say no, correct? When someone makes a request of you, you have a right to say no. You cannot be forced to do something for someone else that isn't ordered by the courts, like with child support or something.

Technically, a woman has the right to say no. She can't be arrested for saying no to a man. But we're not talking about legality here, people. We don't live in some bizarre black and white world where the only thing that matters is law. We're talking about the structure of society - the social norms that dictate our daily functioning and interactions with other humans.

When a man wants to have sex with a woman, or do anything sexual, a woman legally has a right to say no at any time and she must be respected. However, socially, this is actually unacceptable most of the time. A woman who says no to a man without being super careful to cradle his delicate feels or make up some excuse is condemned by our society. She's a heartless bitch. When a woman says yes to some things and then says no when the sexual contact escalates, she's a cold bitch or she was leading him on, therefore a bitch. Men routinely react with indignant outrage to a woman saying no to them, and we're told constantly through media and through the condoning of this behavior that he's right to act this way.

So if a woman is a bitch if she says no, that tells us that under the law of social norms, women have no right to say no.

This is just one example of many. There's the right to safety, the right to not have to smile if you don't feel like it, the right to not have to interact with every asshole who wants your attention, the right to go about your day without being harassed by fuckoff asspile men who think they have every right in the world to the immediate and unconditional attention and compliance of women.

This is yet another reason I will never take MRAs seriously. People understand that there is more to human rights than what is coded into law. But as soon as it becomes convenient for MRAs, then governmental law is all that matters. 

"That's almost as bad as the Catholic Church taking 400 years to officially apologize for the Crusades."

This is why I hate white people.

It isn't "almost as bad" as shit. There's no need for the comparison. We're not taking the spotlight from this subject to focus on another.

Fuck. That. Noise.

And you know what? If we're going to talk comparisons, let's talk about how US chattel slavery lasted longer than the Crusades, and let's talk about how the Catholic Church didn't apologize but Mississippi still had LAWS in place that upheld slavery.

I really am just really trying to not scream.

Because having a LGBTQ donor automatically means you'll end up with a LGBTQ kid. Because hetero couples never end up with LGBTQ kids, right?

Because the gay! It spreads!

But not through those straight folks. Oh, never. That would mean that they could be gay. And we can't have that, right?