We've all seen tweets from the multiple 'Meninist' accounts making offensive and ignorant jokes for the sake of privileged audiences' followers and retweets. Unfortunately, a lot of teenage males, and even some females, eat it up. They find the blatant sexism and violence-encouraging tweets to be funny, and they share them with their friends. Some think the problematic tweets are no big deal and that people need to learn how to "take a joke". It needs to be recognized, however, that this form of encouragement poses as a threat to the progression of our society and needs to be stopped.
The primary issue with Meninist Twitter accounts is that those who run them are uneducated. They do not understand that the movement of feminism is, by definition, a fight for equality of the sexes. Rather, they see it as a threat against the male population's power and react viciously to protect the patriarchy. They do this by tweeting offensive things about women in an attempt to hinder the accomplishments achieved by the feminist movement.
Had the owners of Meninist accounts understood the real definition of feminism and created "meninism" with the intentions being to defend men's rights and fight for real problems that boys and men face every day, I may have even been okay with it. Even though a "meninism" movement is about as necessary as having a straight pride parade or a white history month, there are some legitimate issues men face in society that should be talked about more. These include the pressure of masculinity and men facing sexual assault, as well as the discrimination faced by stay-at-home dads and transgender men. But, of course, Meninist accounts don't bother to touch upon any of these real problems because they are too busy whining about the "friendzone", an exaggerated struggle that basically just shames women who simply want to say 'no' to boys they are not interested in.
These accounts are mainly notorious for sharing jokes that strongly demean women. They portray us as dumb, incapable and powerless beings who exist solely for men's pleasure. A real tweet that came from @MeninistTweet reads: "My friend told me women are only good for food and sex. I was appalled. He forgot about cleaning." Another one says, "Ladies if you're tired of us staring at your boobs, then just turn around. We like asses too". These are outright disgusting and offensive, yet they still get large amounts of positive feedback from men and women who agree with this sexist mindset. The jokes encourage a discriminatory attitude toward women among the public and work to bring society backwards through decades worth of fighting for progression. The "meninist movement" is toxic for modern society, and yet all the accounts collectively have almost 2 million followers and make a good amount of money selling merchandise (allowing fans to proudly present themselves as misogynists).
It gets worse than the hyper-sexualization and devaluing of women, though. These accounts constantly trivialize the issues of sexual assault and domestic violence. Meninist accounts have tweeted things like, "Beer... helping ugly guys get laid since 1876. Rohypnol... guaranteeing it since 1992" and "I was at a restaurant and noticed my waitress had a black eye.. So I ordered really slow, because she obviously doesn't listen." They make jokes about these grave crimes, belittling real victims, since the majority of them are women. Twitter users repeatedly reading and supporting jokes like these will eventually become numb to the severity of these issues and view things like rape and abuse to be masculine, common and accepted. They may seem like innocent and thoughtless jokes, but dangerous jokes that promote assault like these were proven to be linked to actually taking part in assault.
So, no, I don't think any of these Meninist accounts have any place on the internet. They devalue women, portray them to be secondary in society, and reinforce the ideals of the patriarchy. They also greatly contribute to rape culture and promote acts of abuse toward women. Unless all Meninist accounts decide to go in a completely different direction with their tweets and start taking a stand for real men's issues and fight for true equality of the sexes, I will not support them, I'll report them.
I encourage you all to unfollow these accounts if you're following them, report them if you're not, and give a long sit-down discussion to anyone you see wearing a Meninist t-shirt, for the sake of society.
