Feminism

Your Laugh o’ the Day: #INeedMasculismBecause

I don’t know if this started as a serious rebuttal to the hashtag #INeedFeminismBecause or if this has just been pure irony from the start, but the #INeedMasculismBecause hashtag is positively flooded with feminists making jokes, and it’s wonderful. Here are a few favorites:

“JamieKilstein: #INeedMasculismBecause maybe one day there will be a male president.”

https://twitter.com/Mowgli3/status/299912320019202049

“Mowgli3: #INeedMasculismBecause one time a ladey told me it was okay to have feelings so I punched her faec”

“nicoleintrovert: #INeedMasculismBecause I’m sitting in jail because I thought having an Audi was equal to consent.”

https://twitter.com/hell_homer/status/299891319671758849

“hellhomer: #INeedMasculismBecause pic.twitter.com/tkFjxqPK”

“saidhabla: #INeedMasculismBecause I shouldn’t automatically have to pay for a dinner because of my gender”

https://twitter.com/ojdajewmann/status/299688991995854848

“ojdajewmann: #IneedMasculismbecause I refused to be accused of rape because she decided later that she shouldn’t have slept with me.”

“dodecahedron: #INeedMasculismBecause do women ever care enough to legislate our reproductive organs? NO!! :-(”

https://twitter.com/dELYSEious/status/299947477543567361

“dELYSEious: #INeedMasculismBecause Beyonce said girls run the world. And that makes it true. And men are now oppressed thanks to pop music.

Some of those may have been serious. Featured image is the wonderful Neil Patrick Harris, who showed up in a Google image search for “masculism.” Legen-dary.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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19 Comments

  1. Its some kinda joke from 4chan friend linked me it it was pretty hilarious. They can’t make up their minds if they are serious or just joking. What a failed attempt.

  2. #INeedMasculismBecause guys get hit in the groin on TV and people think that sort of violence is funny!

    1. Hah! I actually DO cringe when I see that stuff, and wonder why so many people think it’s hilarious. Then again, I know people have different sensibilities than I do. Once I was walking by a playground when I noticed a group of little boys taking turns kicking each other in the balls, and then laughing their collective asses off!

  3. I don’t understand this one. “I refused to be accused of rape because she decided later that she shouldn’t have slept with me.” If they both consented and later she decided that she didn’t want to have sex, she can accuse him of rape? Isn’t that what people often accuse rape victims of doing? Or was that the point of the statement?

    1. It’s a common belief among MRAs that most rape accusations are simply cases of sex women regret. I’m not sure if this tweet is expressing this belief or parodying it, though.

        1. This brings to mind Poe’s Law… or perhaps another saying I like (though I have no idea for the source of): “The failure mode of ‘clever’ is ‘asshole.'”

          1. That is a remarkably insightful saying! I shall have to try to remember that each and every time I say something snarky on the the internet. I’ve certainly experienced the failure mode myself a couple of times!

          2. Exactly, which reminds me of one of my earlier tweets:

            Never try to “make fun of misogyny” by imitating it. As with creationism there is no way to distinguish a parody from the real thing.

            I suspect that the ones by Said and Andrew Smith are serious, but who knows…

          3. I agree! Making fun of misogyny usually fails because even if you succeed in communicating that it is a joke successfully, it’s likely not funny and involves making people listen to messages they are frankly very sick of.

      1. IMHO, it would be unwise to dismiss his argument as a fringe, woman-hating rant (although it is) because it can also be a seductive argument when offered to your typical, non-rapist (the 95%), young, heterosexual male who would otherwise be on your side. He’s not saying (directly) that most date rape is just regretted sex, he’s referring to the straw-woman argument that feminists make no distinction between regretted sex and rape. They can’t argue that “no means yes” anymore, so they argue that “yes can really mean no if she changes her mind, so you’re going to jail if you can’t anticipate out how she’s going to feel about you in the sober light of day because feminists.” That opens up a lot of ambiguity into what is actually a non-ambiguous situation, which causes uncertaincy, which causes fear. The pro-rape camp is successful when they fear monger to guys that they’ll be falsely accused of rape, but the “feminists believe regretted sex is rape” argument is particularly effective for them because it makes guys afraid that they can convicted of rape even if she admits that she was a willing partner. Most guys (even those who would never have sex with somebody they perceive to be too drunk to consent) are insecure enough to think that at least one of the women they’ve hooked up with was making a drunken mistake, even if they’re not sure which one it was (which makes it scarier). They themselves may have later regretted sex they had while drunk, or knows another man who has, so the idea that a woman (who’s already shamed by society for engaging in casual sex) would later regret having casual sex with them isn’t a far fetched idea. In reality, you’re probably more likely to be a convicted rapist suing for custody of your rape-baby than be accused of rape by a woman because she regretted having sex with you, but as long as you keep men scared, they’ll be receptive to this argument, even if it plays on an irrational fear.

        That’s why I love these anti-rape posters, as seen here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/01/08/rape-prevention-aimed-at-rapists-does-work/ and think they work as well as they do. The women shown in the posters are unambiguously too drunk to consent and most heterosexual men would view having sex with them at that point to be rape. It targets the correct population (heterosexual men, rather then blaming women for getting too drunk) and gives them an easy to understand message that would be reinforced by their peer group. I’m sure some in the MRA camp wouldn’t consider it rape, but they’d have a much harder time arguing that then the straw-woman argument, which is why they use it. The posters force them to have a discussion based in reality, which they lose.

        OK, a bit longer than I anticipated, but I guess my point is that guy may not necessarily be a woman-hating mysoginist, just frightened. He’s afraid because he’s been told he no longer know where the line is, even if that’s a lie. Men know what rape is, which is why prosecutors want us on rape juries and why data shows the vast majority of rapists know precisely what they’re doing at the time. Fearful people don’t make rational decisions, they just do whatever they can to feel safe again, if that means ignoring date-rape, then that’s what they’ll do.

  4. #INeedMasculismBecause every male character in every Rockstar game was written by someone that clearly hates men.

    No seriously I cannot stand nearly all of these characters. I really don’t care if they’re being mocked, They’re still saying horrible things over and over again.

    1. I interviewed for a community manager position with Rockstar Games a couple of years back and the office, in the Village on Broadway, and it pretty much was an adolescent gamer dude’s fantasy…also, it was pet friendly. Dogs everywhere.

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