Let's Root for the Overdog!

He hit that guy and now his team
gets the thing...um, hurray?

There are totally some shitty things about having a Y chromosome. We tend to die sooner. We can get
drafted. Sometimes the men's room just has this drain thing running along one wall that we're all supposed to pee in. Oh, and sports. Everybody just sort of assumes we're into sports. I can't express in words how quickly my higher brain functions shut down when someone tries to start a conversation about some team I don't care about playing a game I don't understand.

Pee-troughs aside, being male can probably be seen as an advantage. We're not actually better than women, it's just that virtually every society that has ever existed has been male-dominated with women usually being relegated to the role of sex object/baby factory/food prep. Women have taken the brunt of history's bullshit and it's only very recently that things (in some parts of the world anyway) have begun to change.

A notable exception would be Wonder Woman's home island of Themyscira
which, while populated entirely by Amazons, is goddamn fictional.

Women have trounced
men in the uterus-having
contest, 3.5 billion to 1.

Turns out that not everyone thinks this is a good thing. A Voice for Men is a website/men's movement that's sick and tired of the agonizingly slow, yet painfully incremental progress women have made towards social equality and they're ready to put dudes back in charge, um, again? More so? Look, I don't really understand what their beef is, but they have a blog, so they must have a valid grievance, right? They don't just let any crackpot put shit up on the internet, do they?

"The problem we see is a culture that still puts women first in so many ways and men come in last...Whether people want to acknowledge it or no, if you look at the numbers, men come in last every time."

-Paul Elam, founder of A Voice for Men,

and possibly the world's worst statistician 

Pictured: the best thing to ever come
from Detroit. Also goddamn fictional.

What culture? What numbers? I guess they do let any crackpot put shit up on the internet. They're even holding an International Men's Conference in beautiful Detroit where speakers will discuss things like paternity fraud, false accusations of rape and misandry.* Detroit, according to Elam, is a symbolically appropriate choice for his man-moot, since it, like men in general, have been ruined by feminism. Not the greed and shortsightedness of an auto-industry adverse to change, but feminism. 

A Voice for Men is part of the larger Men's Human Rights Movement, whose central tenet is that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it's men who throughout history have been the victims of oppression, sexism and discrimination. Yikes.

Henry VIII: another victim of feminist smear campaigns.
I mean, he only murdered two of his wives...

The vote? But what if they go into labor
 in the booth? So they get 2 votes now?

Look, I am in no way trying to minimize the experiences of men who have been discriminated against, or been falsely accused of rape. That sucks, but examples of that kind of thing are dwarfed by the overwhelming numbers of women who have been discriminated against or who have been the victims of sexual assault. Elam's website is full of articles and cherry-picked news stories designed to show how women have abused the feminist movement to make the world a hostile place for men. One guy actually posted a rant blaming Elliot Roger's recent killing spree in Santa Barbara on feminism. Do you suppose that when one of your fellow man-fans leaps to the defense of a mass murderer, it might be time to re-evaluate?

I'm sure Paul Elam worked very hard on his website and on his big stupid conference and everything, but it's not like there has to be a limited supply of justice in the world. Doesn't he know that he can support men while at the same time supporting equality for women? Like, it might even be the same thing.

"Nope, it's us or them."

-Paul Elam,
An Angry, Shouty Voice for Men

*Yeah, misandry, it means a hatred of men, I had to look it up, that's how often in comes up. Even my spell check flags it as not really a thing.