I've heard that Men's Rights Activists consider Mad Max:Fury Road to be "feminist propaganda." I wondered if people really thought that and if so why and I thought the best people to ask would be actual MRA.

FookSake · 2015-05-20T18:33:24+00:00

Newly-minted MRA. Could not give a single shit about this movie, politically-speaking.

I'll probably see it; Patton Oswalt gave it rave reviews, and I'm a fan of his. But I don't expect it to be anything more than what it is - an action movie featuring a female badass. Nothing new, nothing revolutionary, just adrenaline.

Organized boycotts and calls for banning intellectual works that disagree with ones ideology is firmly not in the MRA tradition that I've experienced so far. Reminds me of a couple of other -isms, though...

DavidByron2 · 2015-05-20T17:56:05+00:00

It's bullshit.

MRAs don't really waste time with that sort of social media criticism much. That's more something feminists do because they have nothing else to do. MRAs have real issues of real legal and institutional discrimination. I mean yeah there's some discussion of the huge bias in programing and advertising in general, but usually in different contexts such as the appeal to women in mass media being due to the much greater economic power women enjoy compared to men. We also take the piss out of media crticism that feminists do like the recent Game of Thrones rape flap.

I mean here's a US senator asking for a boycott of the TV program:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/19/media/game-of-thrones-claire-mccaskill/

From what I can see there was one website that attacked the film Mad Max and they look MRA-ish but I think they are banned from posting links here because they're a bit weird or something. Not really clear about it. Not really interested.

GenderNeutralLanguag · 2015-05-20T18:20:52+00:00

Two sources I know of called for a boycott. ROK (A PUA website that is explicitly not MRA) and Aron Claey (A radical MGTOW who is explicitly not MRA)

These two explicitly non-MRA sources are what the Feminist Media sources as the MRA call to boycott the movie.

Are there issues with the movie, sure. It's a plotless 90 min chase scene that is nothing more that explosions and car crashes. It presents men as little more than nameless faceless tools to be used up and discarded.

As some sort of exploration of gender roles, it fails horribly and I don't care to see it. As a 90 min chase scene and gore fest, It exceeds expectations, but again I don't care to see it.

2015-05-20T17:56:30+00:00

I saw the movie myself and honestly didn't see anything I thought was super anti-man or whatever.

The bad guys are an analogy for an extreme radfem interpretation of patriarchy and how women are treated by men in society, but mra's have not picked up on that as far as Im aware.

Anyway, just curious to what it is about the movie that set you guys off, if anything at all.

Nothing set mra's off, there was no boycott, its just feminists lying about mra's, as per usual.

mr_egalitarian · 2015-05-20T18:50:40+00:00

I thought it was a fun movie and was glad that there were good female characters. I had no problem with the movie at all.

I'm an egalitarian anti-feminist, but feminists call me an MRA because I don't believe men are privileged relative to women, and I believe we need to focus on men's issues without having to use the framework of feminist theory.

azazelcrowley · 2015-05-20T19:30:24+00:00

No, it's not true. Also, thankyou for trying to actually find out if it was. The MRA is frequently lied about by the media because of attempts to delegitimize it. If you want an example of feminist propoganda, mad max isn't it. The lie that the MRM is boycotting mad max would be an example of feminist propoganda.

scrumpinforthelord · 2015-05-25T05:29:42+00:00

I loved it.

There may be some truth to the qualm of it being a femino-centric narrative, but that's fine. Sure, the good guy/bad guy numbers were split almost exclusively down gender lines, but that was a central motif of the fiction.

The villainous family was oppressing men and boys like fucking crazy, which is something I think a lot of people missed. It decried relentlessly the LITERAL desposableness of men.

Part of the narrative was "how fucking dumb is it that these women are being treated like treasure while the warboys are dying in droves."

Which, you know, makes the whole thing more complex than a gender antagonist kind of thing. Like real life.

L0gic1o1 · 2015-05-20T18:50:58+00:00

A PUA said Mad Max was feminist propaganda. Because feminists are desperate to find something against the MRA, they latched on to this... despite the person they said was a MRA hated MRAs (and we don't like him either)

OirishM · 2015-05-20T18:23:55+00:00

Hi all,

Just to make things a little more confusing, I'm not an MRA, but I don't think the notion of this film being feminist propaganda is 100% ridiculous. I'm sure the film itself is fine, but it does tweak my interested somewhat why a feminist like Eve Ensler was hired as some kind of consultant for the film.

Why do you need a feminist consultant on a film anymore than you need a liberal consultant or a conservative consultant, or a consultant for any other sort of political position?

What was more aggravating IMO was seeing the usual rigmarole play out of people (usually feminist types) not bothering to do their research and calling a PUA site like RoK an MRA site, when a few minutes' checking will show that isn't the case. It seemed to be mainly one guy on that blog doing the critiquing, and it just ballooned into an indictment of the manosphere at large.

MRSPArchiver · 2015-05-20T17:46:13+00:00

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notnotnotfred · 2015-05-21T04:29:57+00:00

I never got into the first series of MM movies, so I'd have to see them to care.

I don't care enough to do that.

Electroverted · 2015-05-21T17:56:36+00:00

Our critics go after the low hanging fruit. A couple misogynist bloggers didn't like Charlize in Mad Max, so now it's "MRAs don't like Mad Max." The same with that kid who shot up California. He posted to a Pick Up Artist website, so now he's an MRA.

When we have so much documented bullshit from feminist actions, it's amazing that they think a few posts from trolls is going to bring us down.

Electroverted · 2015-05-21T17:59:14+00:00

I saw the movie myself and honestly didn't see anything I thought was super anti-man or whatever.

There's a lot of pro-feminism in the movie, but it's not combatative. However there is moment when the wives are kicking that boy out of the War Machine and they say something like "Men destroyed the Earth." That's about it, really.

2015-05-20T21:28:39+00:00

Community A is a total patriarchy, to the point women are chattel, complete with chastity belts, lactating women getting literally milked by machines, and where they are literally kept for breeding purposes.

Community B is a total matriarchy, to the point where men are lured to their deaths using sex as a subterfuge, and the women have become outrageously skilled, but are also clearly dying off because of their distrust of men.

That blatant and ridiculous binary was set up by the director so that he could spend the last half of the movie taking that strawman binary down, and giving us the moral lesson that true success needs both men and women. The entire plot centers around escaping A, finding out B isn't all its cracked up to be, putting everyone's head's together, and figuring out that with everyone working as a team, A can be taken down.

a) I don't go to action movies to get moralized to.

b) If you're going to moralize in an action movie, make it subtle. Give hints or have a few scenes or a key character. This movie is not in any way subtle about the moral message we're supposed to walk away with. You're beaten about the head with it from minute one.

c) Most people in here still managed to enjoy it, regardless. I might be one of the only people here who hasn't seen the movie at this point, so there's clearly no boycott.

d) Even I'm going to see it, just not at the theater.

InBaggingArea · 2015-05-20T19:05:39+00:00

Haven't seen it. Couldn't give a flying fish-bicycle.

Actually, I heard about it first on a feminist sub where they were saying it was feminist propaganda. That was before I read about it here in the context of feminists accusing us of boycotting it.

The1KrisRoB · 2015-05-20T23:42:00+00:00

After watching it last night I think any talk of a "secret agenda" or anything like that is ridiculous. There's really no real story or any great character development. it's purely a movie based around explosions, car chases and stunts.

Anyone claiming it's "anti male" or anything like that needs to calm down and stop being so paranoid.

2015-05-24T04:11:10+00:00

All movies push out bull shit regardless. Spike Lee movies push out racism, Mel Gibson anti-Jew...people always talk. Let people make the movies they want to make; don't like it then don't watch it. How do you know if you'll like it or not, watch the trailer or teaser. =)

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