Animator Scott Benson Eviscerates MRA Arguments with Clever Cartoon

An intrepid tipster, as intrepid tipsters are liable to do, has sent us a pretty cool link to a cartoon created by animator Scott Benson. It’s called “But I’m a Nice Guy,” and sums up the fallacy lurking behind MRA screeds about rampant misandry and feminist conspiracies with a simple ice cream analogy that even the most deluded, self-loathing Nice Guy can (hopefully) understand.

You see, men have been getting all the ice cream from the giant ice cream spigot. I’m not sure why ice cream comes out of a spigot, but it does, so deal with it. They’re used to getting all the ice cream, so used to it that when a woman gets just a scoop of spigot ice cream, some men stare at the lost scoop aghast, perceiving a (brief) interruption in their ice cream monopoly. This proves too much for your average mistruster of change, sending him into an ice-cream conniption fit, during which he doesn’t even stop to consider that, um, he still has an awfully lot of ice cream. Too much, in fact — he could never eat it all without cryogenically freezing his brain so that it will outlive his body and awake in a new robot body far in the future when ice cream is divided equally among all people, irrespective of race, sex, or religious affiliation.

Here, in Benson’s own words, is the rationale for such a video:

A quick editorial cartoon about the intersection of self-pity, entitlement, rape, territoriality, misogyny and fear of women. You see it all over the place online in the form of Men’s Rights Activists (of whom there are a few reasonable non-misogynists), Men Going Their Own Way, Pick Up Artists, and dudes touting the “Red Pill”, because The Matrix is a good movie. Look any of these up if you have the stomach for it. These are extreme examples, but watered-down forms of these ideas are everywhere.

In lurking their blogs and youtube channels for a while, I’ve noticed that beyond the standard patriarchal chauvinism there is this deep fear of women – what they will do to me, how they will reject me, how they will use me, how they are changing society in a way that does not favor me, how they are making men into something I don’t like, how they are making themselves into something I don’t like, that they won’t give me what I want, and that they won’t give me what I think is rightfully mine. This goes beyond fear of feminism- this is fear of women at its purest. And that, to quote a puppet, leads to anger and hate. It’s sad.

I am a feminist. I think there’s enough ice cream to go around, but it does mean those of us with 3 scoops might have to give one or two up. Also, The Matrix is a fun movie but probably not anything you should be basing a philosophy on.

If you like what you see, Benson has already penned a thoughtful follow-up in which he addresses an anonymous commenter’s anxieties about boys’ increasingly poor performance in school. It’s good stuff, and maybe Benson’s forthrightness will sway some teetering MRAs. Then again, the Internet really is no place for rational discussion, so…