“Please Killl Yourselves”: MRAs respond to #mencallmethings
Well, that was … instructive. The Twitter hashtag extravaganza that is #mencallmethings is still going strong. But I think at this point it’s safe to say that it has basically served it’s purpose: to highlight the obnoxious, obscene, often threatening misogynist shit that women who express their opinions about almost anything on the internet get in their inboxes or in comments online on a regular basis. Women with feminist blogs who actually call out this kind of misogyny get this sort of abuse basically every day.
Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, who started up this hashtag campaign, explained in an eloquent and angry blog post why she did it: to point out how absolutely routine this sort of shit is. When she started her blog, she really hadn’t anticipated the sheer volume of vicious shit she’d get:
I got targeted. With threats, with insults, with smear campaigns, with attempts to threaten my employment or credibility or just general ability to get through the day with a healthy attitude and a minimal amount of insult.
The intent of all this abuse is simple: to intimidate. When someone says to a woman online “I hope you get raped with a chainsaw,” the point is to get her to shut up. The person who posts this sort of violent shit, Doyle notes,
hopes that the next time you sit down to write, you’ll remember that yikesy chainsaw-rape thing and think, “you know? Maybe this isn’t such a great idea. Maybe I don’t need to say this. Maybe I’ll piss someone off, and maybe it will be more than I can handle, and you know, maybe my thoughts on this topic just ARE NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH for me to risk the headache/fear/irritation/distress/panic attack I know I will get.”
And then, when you say that aloud, they call you a whiny little girl who can’t handle the Internet. Because, of COURSE multiple chainsaw-rape comments aren’t a big deal! They’re just words! Sticks and stones! …
To you, my friends, I say: Fuck that noise. All of this matters. A hostile work environment matters. Being afraid of your own in-box matters. Deleting your blog because that’s the only way for you to have a normal, non-hate-filled life matters. “Accepting” that continual, virulent, hateful misogynist abuse is a pre-condition for being a lady who talks about thing, or for challenging sexism in any way, no matter who you are: That matters. And if you think we’re fragile, well. LET US COUNT THE WAYS we have hacked it, under conditions your pampered manly self just cannot imagine. LET US DEMONSTRATE FOR YOU the shit we wade through, every day, in order to talk about whether or not we liked that one “Community” episode or Lady GaGa album.
Naturally, critics of the whole hashtag campaign have done their best to minimize and dismiss this sort of routine harassment in exactly the ways that Doyle predicted they would.
The charming Ferdinand Bardamu of In Mala Fide responded to #mencallmethings with a bunch of obnoxious comments that conveniently proved basically every point Sady Doyle was trying to make with the hashtag in the first place. He started off with this bit of rapier wit:
He followed this up with a clumsy fat joke:
He continued on in this vein for awhile, so proud of his insightful critiques that he made a blog post about it.
Encouraged by Bardamu’s example, blogger PMAFT (Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology) announced a #MenCallMeThings Trolling Contest. The highlight of his own contributions to this contest:
Over on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, c0mputar offered slightly more coherent, if equally misguided, response.
The reality is that most of the “misogyny” they face is just criticism to their feminist viewpoints. I see this a lot when I confront feminists arguments, present my arguments, and get called a misogynist, amongst other things characterized by misandry. It happens on both sides …
Really now? Here are some actual examples of comments posted on #mencallmethings (taken from a comment from Shaenon in the discussion here).
here’s some to start: ‘I’ll rape your mum, faggot fuck’ “I’ll come to your house and kill you”
#mencallmethings, impersonate me on FB, & make disgusting sexual comments, post my name & # when I helped organize Slutwalk
cunt, whore, ugly, disgusting, cold, feminazi, shut the fuck up bitch, manipulative, crazy, playing the victim, sociopath
Bitch, whore, being sensitive, little girl, dumb, subject of jokes involving physical and sexual assault.
Any variation on fat and/or ugly at this point just makes me yawn.
I’ve had so many emails and messages telling me I deserve a beating, I don’t even keep track any longer.
“13? Judging by the size of your titties, I’d of thought you were 18.”
(censored version) If you keep talking the way you do, you deserved to get raped.
My #mencallmethings moment – receiving an email consisting of 1600 lines plus of the same insult over and over. My crime? Being fat.
I’ve had so many guys tell me how good I must be in bed because I’m fat and therefor will do anyone
I usually get ‘sweetheart’ just before they dismiss my argument as being ‘stupid’. No counter argument.
Will not repeat the violence that’s been directed at me but this one made me laugh “Blubbering self-important herd animal.”
apparently I’m a lesbian… I was unaware until #mencallmethings.
I’M ON ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND I CANT EVEN JERK OFF CORRECTLY NOW & ITS BECAUSE OF WOMEN SO FUCK ALL YOU INFERIOR COWS
“You should have your tongue ripped out.”
I get sent one rape threat a month on average.
I was once told “get back in the kitchen you ugly bitch” for posting on a Linux board (can’t remember which one now)
Have you ever wanted someone to tell you that your genetalia should be stapled shut with bugs inside, start a blog
How about being choked to death during a forced blowjob? Start a feminist blog.
Not worth the effort to murder: the most recent example of what I had to delete off the blog when #mencallmethings
C0mputar, in his Reddit post, went on to offer another argument that seems to be a favorite of those trying to trivialize the abuse catalogued by the contributors to #mencallmethings:
In the end, veterans of the internet know there is no protected demographic. Everyone gets shit on, but if you make a point of belonging with a group, you get shit on even more, and more so the smaller you are. You know who gets shit on more than feminists? MRAs.
Really? Some MRA types on Twitter tried to get a rival hashtag going: #womencallmethings. Needless to say, they didn’t have much to work with.
One Man Boobz non-fan — whom I banned for his repeated comments about anal rape — tried to post a sarcastic little comment here last night dismissing #mencallmethings on similar grounds. Here’s a screenshot from my wordpress account, with his identifying data erased:
Let’s just, for contrast, take a look at the previous comment he tried to post here:
Another day, another “hope you get raped” comment.
Ironically, though I’m pretty thoroughly disliked across the manosphere, I actually get a lot less of this sort of abuse than most reasonably well-known feminist bloggers who happen to be non-dudes. Oh, sure, I get called a “traitor” and a “mangina,” and once in a while someone points out that I’m, you know, fat, but when it comes to the really nasty shit, the abusive commenters and emailers seem to much prefer going after women. This may be because they are misogynistic assholes. That’s just a theory, though.
Posted on November 8, 2011, in antifeminism, bullying, creepy, douchebaggery, manginas, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, PUA, rape, rapey, sexual harassment, threats, violence against men/women. Bookmark the permalink. 722 Comments.
I’m still wondering what “feminist morals” are o_O
I need to know what my morality should be :(
recipe plz
OK, to be granted there are some real reasons why I hate the Devils. They were incredibly dull, Stevens was kind of an asshole sometimes (how many people were you planning to injure, dude?), and Brodeur beat his wife.
So hey, add in some illegal videotaping and Brandon can be their mascot.
I think she gave it to me once… I will look for it! :D
Stevens was an asshole as a player all the time >_> Without those hits, Lindros prolly would be a lock for the HoF and Kariya might be too…
I didn’t know (or forgot) that Brodeur beat his wife :(
Or actually no, wasn’t Brodeur the one who hooked up with his wife’s sister? Roy was the one who beat his wife.
#whatthefuckiswrongwithcanadiangoalies
Brussel Sprouts are fine… on someone else’s plate.
I don’t like ‘em, but what you do on your time, with your mouth, etc., is your business.
This, is “feminist morality”.
But Pecunium, I just don’t feel right leaving my sister alone in a room with a brussels sprout.
Yup, Roy was the one who attacked his wife and ripped a door off its hinges O_O
I have such weird mixed feelings about Lindros. On the one hand, kind of an asshole himself at times. On the other hand, no one deserves to be bullied by Bobbie Clark, and he’s a perfect example of how society can manage to punish men for not being manly enough even if they’re build like a brick shithouse.
“Accepting” that continual, virulent, hateful misogynist abuse is a pre-condition for being a lady who talks about thing, or for challenging sexism in any way, no matter who you are: That matters.
************
You were abused for talking about a shape shifting alien that imitates other life forms?
Completely off topic amazing brussel sprouts recipe:
Crock pot mustardy brussel sprouts.
Cut in half and blanch about 1 to 1 1/2 lb brussel sprouts for about 5 minutes.
Drain and toss in crock pot.
Drizzle with 1 – 2 TBSP Olive Oil.
Add 2-3 TBSP brown mustard (or dijon, or sweet and hot, or a mix thereof)
Add about 1/3 cup water.
Dash of salt and pepper.
Cook on high for 4 or low for 6-8 hours.
Stir thoroughly and serve.
@evilwhitemalempire:
Well, good to see you can still form a semi-coherent sentence at least…
I used to hate Lindros so much, b/c I tend to dislike superstar players of teams I don’t like plus that he refused to play for the Nordiques >:| And his family and the way they handled themselves made it easy to hate him and them… but I’ve since kinda turned… I mean yeah he’s a spoiled superstar but then… he was also treated really shabbily by Clarke, and he was actually a really amazing player when he was playing and I’ve come to really appreciate how much talent he had and wished we could have seen how much he really could have done. :\
I think the fact that the first things I ever read about him were trying to shame him for being un-manly by, um, crying when his dog died and drinking herbal tea, inclined me to cut him a lot of slack, not all of which he deserves. But really I blame most of the mess that surrounded him equally on his idiot parents and Clark. Who builds a team around someone that young? Way too much pressure – I’m not surprised he cracked eventually.
Also interesting thing about how masculinity is contructed in North America – when Kariya started doing yoga everyone seemed to be fine with it. Old school folks thought it was a bit weird, but no one really shamed him for it. But when Lindros did the same, everyone was lining up to go “see, told you he was a wimp”.
It’s a narrow, constricting prison, the American idea of masculinity.
The problem w/ Bobby Clarke, is he wanted Lindros to be Bobby Clarke… and Lindros isn’t that guy, and it was like Clarke thinks “I would have fought through that head injury if I was playing, so you should do” and etc >:\
And yeah there was a lot of that “not measuring up to masculinity” stuff w/ Lindros… I think magnified because he was 6’4″ and so big and strong physically and people wanted to dislike him because of how he was acting and how he refused to play for the team that drafted him, and so they took it out on every show of “weakness” he did :\
Sports is rly bad for this sorta thing, and hockey esp :\ I remember when Shayne Corson took himself out of the Leaf’s lineup during the playoffs and it was revealed he was suffering from depression and fans just JUMPED on him :( I defended him a “letter of the day” in the Toronto Star… b/c I was also suffering from depression and had tried to kill myself that winter :( But it was awful the amount of vitriol he got :\ I mean this is his life and mental health and people are jumping on him about a sport?
@Cassandra I think it has to do with the way ppl perceived Kariya and Lindros, and a lot of that had to do w/ their size, and the way their skillsets were seen, and what people expected of each. I also wonder how much Kariya being half Asian played into how they saw the bar of masculinity set for each. That Kariya wasn’t perceived as that masculine to begin with, so the bar was already low for him :\
(do you have IM or something btw? O: this convo might be better on that XD )
pssst…. chatroom!
I dunno if she’s on the chatroom…
I’m there :D
*cough*
Yes… well… Jolly good, hashtag #mencallmethings. Good show, and all that.
*wipes monocle clean*
In MRAL land, average is short, and no man under 5ft10 has ever had sex. Which kind of makes me wonder how I came to exist, since my Dad is about 5ft8.
Sometimes, when he’s really worked up, MRAL proclaims that a man has to be at least eight feet tall to get laid. It’s a wonder our species manages to perpetrate itself.
My dad’s about 5’8″ too. My mom flat-out doesn’t like tall men. Not that you’d ever notice his height if you met him, because he’s one intimidating mofo.
FUCK IT’S AMI ANGELWINGS RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! #menshouldcallmethings
I think you meant perpetuate xD
But I think some ppl would accuse our species of doing some pretty good perpetrating too :\
I do have IM but I can’t post it here in trolllandia. Can you imagine FUCK GASH HER ROYAL HIGHNESS why don’t women like short guys like me? popping up randomly in your IM?
@Shaenon – Did you really mean to write eight feet? MRAL is under the impression that human women only want to have sex with giraffes and elephants?
(Continuing derail…)
I do think it was about both how Kariya and Lindros were perceived in terms of their physicality (funny since Kariya isn’t actually a small guy at all, he’s just small-ish by NHL standards) and about race. In fact, I think Kariya was perceived as smaller than he actually is because of his race. When I used to go to games he actually seemed bigger than, say, Pavel Bure, who people also saw as not huge but didn’t seem to see as physically fragile in the same way, even with his wonky knee. Yzerman can’t have been any bigger than Kariya either, but again, not seen as physically weak in the same way. Style of play is a part of that too though – people see Forsberg as super tough and he’s about average sized really, and it’s because of how he plays.
I think you meant perpetuate xD
But I think some ppl would accuse our species of doing some pretty good perpetrating too :\
Everything a woman does is perpetrating. Perpetrating EVIL!
@Shaenon – Did you really mean to write eight feet? MRAL is under the impression that human women only want to have sex with giraffes and elephants?
I believe he sometimes goes as high as nine feet. I assume he’s deliberately exaggerating, but he seems to genuinely think that the taller a man is, the more attractive he becomes, and that six feet is the absolute minimum height for ever getting a girlfriend.
Actually, it’s no picnic being six foot plus from the age of thirteen – far from thinking you’re God’s gift to women, you’re often painfully self-conscious because you can’t hide in a crowd no matter how much you might wish to. In fact, I’m willing to bet that my dating track record wasn’t much better than MRAL’s up to the age he is now, despite this apparently massive advantage.
Anyway, if he’s “average height”, I simply don’t see what the problem is. Most women I know just don’t care about that kind of thing – they’re after an engaging personality, an interesting conversationalist, a keen sense of humor and an expression of genuine interest in themselves as people, not as potential sexual partners.
Shorter Brandon (again): Nuh Uh!
I always miss out on all the fun =(
Why would we have to guess Brandon’s intentions? Seem pretty clear to me: make an idiotic, irrelevant metaphor, hope no one will notice, and then when called on the idiocy, claim to be trolling/have secret intentions nobody knows about!
I feel for you, Joanna. I always seem to miss out on the stupid WWII parallels as well.
Me too, Joanna. But I guess the metaphor makes sense if you think Switzerland almost never get attacked because they’re so smart and above all that. (or that everybody like chocolate and swiss knives too much to endanger the production)
I think most people are too scared of the military’s uniforms. Who wants to be killed by someone in that?
I too am disappoint on missing out on the fun! Ami, isn’t the point of “feminist morality” that it’s supposed to be an oxymoron? Cos we’re feminazis after all, and Nazis had no morals, or something like that, say the MRAs. Natch we have no morals, when we won’t get back in the kitchen and make them poor undomesticated menz a sammich!!11! XD
(That’s me trying to take a leaf from Ami’s fun and fluffy style-book.)
Are most commenters in the US judging by the gun love earlier? The gun as self-defence meme is pretty scary, I would have thought producing a deadly weapon needlessly escalates and raises the stakes, unless the situation has already gone to hell, and if things go wrong weapons can be turned against their owners. I’m just over 50 kg/under 120 lbs and slight-build so my first strike would be a kick to the crotch and running like hell. Why not non-lethal alternatives like a can of mace? Apart from the fact that I live in a country where carrying guns around in daily life is not the norm.
I personally find that I cannot be properly above it all until I inform everyone of how above it all I am.
Also, anybody else really sick of “I am an asshole super on purpose just to bug you, so I win if you take umbrage! But also I win if you don’t take umbrage because my points are clearly super legitimate. Not that I believe them.”
@Lauralot: Why so serious?
Oh, and Brandon’s not the sharpest tool in the drawer, is he? After all, if your plan is less convincing than the underpants gnomes then there’s not much hope.
1. Make an unconvincingly strained metaphor
2. Get pwned multiple times from not knowing the subject
3. Whine about people not understanding ‘my super sekwet meaning’ (repeat 2 and 3)
4. ????
5. Profit!
Brandon, a metaphor works best if the elements actually parallel the thing for which it’s a metaphor. When you said you’re like Switzerland, people assumed you were comparing yourself to Switzerland.
Um, yeah, Hershele, but that’s only because we are too foolish to understand his Joker-from-The-Dark-Knight-ian wheels within wheels!
Everyone still forgets that Ireland is neutral too =D (though we did let planes fuel up at Shannon airport *cough*).
To give the swiss some credit, they did a tricky thing (established a non-aristocratic federation in a late feudal age), and managed to maintain it.
Part of that was because they were fanatics. partly because they militarised almost everyone, and partly because they didn’t have enough of what people wanted to be worth spending the money/time to go and take.
Which is why, for ages, the prime export/moneymaking enterprise in Switzerland was violence. They were very good at being hired thugs. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican are just the last vestige of the Swiss as mercenaries, but the practice goes back more than 400 years.
It made them painfully scrupulous at keeping the exact letter of a contract, which they exploited to steal all those assets I was talking about earlier.
But Hershele, we weren’t supposed to compare him to Switzerland in WW2, we were supposed to compare him to the Ideal of the Neutral Swiss who are honest as the day is long.
The ethical Swiss, who woudn’t dream of cheating someone with the exact letter of a contract as tool to prevent execution of intent.
Not the sort of people who say, “fuck you, we got ours,”. We weren’t supposed to compare the real Swiss (as an historical object, not individual people), to the real Brandon (as exposed in his writings and confessed ideas/actions/philosophy).
We weren’t supposed to to that, at all.
@Hershele: It did. I was only comparing myself to Switzerland in the sense that they were neutral during WW2. Anything more than that and you are reading too much into it.
So we are supposed to ignore the role they had in screwing families out of their life savings during the war as well as after?
You may be a mental midget but the rest of us are not.
@Elizabeth: Clearly you don’t know the difference between a simple comment and a full blown debate.
“‘@CassandraSays THIS IS A METAPHOR
‘That’s a spoon.’
“And this is Sparta.”
It’s not a cigar?
Maybe Brandon had better follow up his metaphors with a careful explanation of what parts of the example he is and isn’t referring to, if he can sort out such a thing.
CassandraSays: Why do I get the feeling you went to a lot of Red Wings games?
Goddamn it, Brandon, don’t sully Batman characters by associating their phrases with yourself.
Don’t sully the Swiss, either. I really doubt they want to be known as Brandon Land.
@Brandon: Intent doesn’t matter diddly in communication (and if you always have to explain how your ‘intent’ was totally different than how a group interpreted what you said, ur doing it rong).
As I explained to DKM, metaphors (or analogies) are tricky in discussions that tend toward the argumentation (claims + evidence) areas of rhetoric — and that’s what most of the discussions here are! — you evoke the parallel with Switzerland, people will analyze it and point out all the similarities which you are apparently pig ignorant of (which is why metaphors can be dangerous in untutored hands).
And the “this is just a simple comment” in a discussion originating from a post about the extreme rhetorical violence directed at women online in which you have figured the MRA and the “feminist movement” as equally bad is NOT just a FUCKING SIMPLE COMMENT. Plus your misunderstanding of Dracula’s (I think?) first response again shows how little you know about the actual history and how much you’ve accepted and operate off common knowledge (which is usually also fucking wrong because of the stereotypes).
It’s part of the debate and can expect to be treated as such, especially with the ongoing way you try to strike Olympian poses and explain your lofty disdain and superiority to the scrabbling mortals down below you (then keep losing it because, as others have said, you really can’t craft text worth a damn.)
Shorter version: you fail at metaphor; you fail at defending your use of metaphor, and you don’t get to wriggle off into “simple comment land.”
MRAL:
FTFY
Brandon:
Then the word you wanted was not “Switzerland” but “neutral.” How silly of me to think that by “Switzerland” you meant “Switzerland.”
What’s even more interesting is that even when Brandon’s saying he’s above it all, quite a few of his previous comments have revealed he has serious problems with ladies. If you’re writing about how you think getting consent from women is impossible and how you only date “fun” women (i.e., women who never disagree with you), it kinda indicates that you already picked a side, Bucko.
Hershele, wtf? For one, I’m pretty sure that anti-Semitism isn’t the central motivation behind the MRA hate spam these guys sometimes get. For two, I don’t think either one of them…. is actually Jewish.
So glad Brandon came down from on high and told us we don’t get his staggering use of metaphor and that we’re just doing it wrong in general. Whatever would we do without him?
Have more cookies?
I checked and Schwyzer isn’t Jewish, he’s Christian. It’s plastered all over his blog. Nice try, dumbass.
I’m sure Ashley thought his metaphor was awesome.
One wonders how Brandon feels about the Swiss in terms of gender relations.
Men who don’t serve in the Army are discriminated against, but women don’t have to serve and they get to vote (they’ve had suffrage for more than forty years).
On the flip side Meller would probably approve of Swiss law on marriage, as there was still coverture, and where the man wanted to live, the wife had to live, in 1971 when women gained the vote.
I don’t know if this is still the case (Google on coverture in Switzerland was particularly unhelpful), but the law does say that in a divorce the primary wage earner cannot be made to suffer too much financially, so a large number of women, and their children, are immediately thrown onto the welfare rolls as soon as a divorce happens.
No fear of sperm-stealing women getting rich off a man’s labor in Switzerland.
Another episode of The Brandon Show? Pass.
LOL. “The Alas a Blog guy.”
We get a weirdly large amount of anti-semitic storm front stuff about “the Alas Jews.” It gets worse when one of the “Alas a Blog guy”s cartoons gets linked around the scaryosphere.
So I realize this was hours and pages ago and the conversation has moved on and I don’t know how comment sections work, but as far as the whole “don’t leave home without a big strong man to protect you from rapists that jump out from bushes (the only rapists!)” thing… How does a woman find a man if she can’t leave home in his absence? Does daddy bring one around? I guess it doesn’t really matter if your prospective mate interesting to you at all since you’re going to need one of them in order to step outside. Even lady-preferring ladies.
Viscaria: Internet dating? :P
“I’d enjoy long walks on the beach, if I felt safe enough to leave the house. I need a big strong man to protect me! Message if interested.”
“I need a big strong man to run security while me and my girlfriend take long walks on the beach, please assist”
Then when a woman who was forced to rely on someone else is abused by that person, it’s the woman’s fault, ofc. Arks is stupid, but I’m not always so certain with some out and out misogynists like this XD
Viscaria, I think that was one of the advantages of arranged marriages. Yes, daddy WOULD indeed seek out a husband for his daughter when time came for her to be married, without his little precious leaving the house! Would this work today in the USA, Canada, or Europe? Maybe not, but it is an idea that should not be dismissed out of hand when the safety and purity of young, unmarried women is concerned.
Food for thought….
I think we’re supposed to look up “Manly protector” in the Yellow Pages every time we leave our homes and don’t have a dad/husband/brother handy to be our escorts. These manly protectors would be delivered to our door in thirty minutes or less, just like Domino’s.
Pecunium–November9, 2011 @12:11pm
Good Heavens, Pecunium, your posts get goofier by the day!
“…Meller would probably approve the Swiss law on marriage, as there was still coverture, and where the man wanted to live, the wife had to live…”
Why would I support a law insisting man and wife share the same domicile? How absurd! Everyone knows that the modern way is the best, with hubby in New York, wifey in San Francisco, and their children farmed out to foster care in Detroit, Miami, and Bullfeathers, Mississippi. (Okay, I made up the last location, but you get the idea).
You’re correct! Meller thinks that the law of coverture is a good idea, at least until something better comes along, and it is a sound alternative to the bloody mess which characterises all too many contemporary families(?) outlined above! Maybe WE should learn from our Swiss friends and return to it!
Also someone “above it all” wouldn’t care whether or not people interpreted his metaphors correctly.
We get a weirdly large amount of anti-semitic storm front stuff about “the Alas Jews.” It gets worse when one of the “Alas a Blog guy”s cartoons gets linked around the scaryosphere.
Barry is such a sweetheart. I love that guy.
I recomend getting a bear.
Even Steven Colbert is scared of bears.
I’m
SparticusScott Adams!@Ami
Now you’re just being hateful. :P
@VoiP
Or lonely jewish goatherders…