“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.
And all men are totes fascinating, right, B?
@Joanna: Easier said than done.
Maybe you shouldn’t date those women.
Maybe those women don’t *want* you to date them, or at least wouldn’t want it if they knew.
Yes, it’s much better to “go your own way” than to try to date women you hate, but this isn’t a “take that, women.” That’s common sense and I think most women would agree.
@Holly: And in order to find out if they are vapid and boring…you kind of have to date them (or at least hang out with them). Vapid girls don’t usually last in my social circle and if they do, they are there because someone else invited them.
Brandon, it really sounds like you’re not trying hard enough.
Brandon: I meet people I dislike all the time. I deal with people I dislike all the time (some of whom I’m related to). It’s called LIFE. Fucking deal with it already.
Do you really want to make this your gendered argument? Do you have the smallest idea how many men are vapid twits as well? Finding someone sucks, period. It isn’t easy to find a good male mate either, and pretending it’s only men who have easier leisure activities is… amusingly stupid.
I mean, that’s putting aside that Alex Novy is trying to make this a dichotomy, which is grossly stupid. I quite frankly met my lover on a message board devoted to roleplaying games. We spent our leisure time together today sinking pirates off the coast of Africa. If you are a nerd, find a nerd. Oh, and don’t make women unwelcome in nerd dom, for any of a host of reasons including enlightened self interest
Brandon – Okay, but that happens to women too. All the time. I’ve been on dates with lots of guys whom I had no interest in and no chemistry with, and you know what I did? I didn’t go on another date with them.
I didn’t hold it against the next guy in some sort of bizarre “I had to go through three bad dates to get to you, so you better make it worth my while” sunk-costs-fallacy way.
I didn’t hold it against men in general for not all being compatible with me.
I didn’t pretend to like them so I could have date them and have sex with them anyway. It was clear that would make both of us miserable in short order..
You win some, you lose some; there’s more people out there who don’t interest you than people who do. But that’s not gendered and it’s not an atrocity. It’s life.
@Joanna: For one, I am not in the dating market right now.
Second, I don’t really try at all. I meet girls and screen them for qualities I like. Most don’t even last 10 minutes. If they pass that, then I get their number and schedule a time to meet. Even then, most don’t pass that either.
All of that rigamarole still takes a lot of effort and time that I probably could use for better things, like hanging out with friends.
“Oh, and don’t make women unwelcome in nerd dom, for any of a host of reasons including enlightened self interest”
Indeed. Guys complain there’s not enough geek girls and then when they come across one they scare them off with “make me a sammich” douchebaggery.
So wait… does Brandon want a world where all women are interesting, so men don’t have to work at finding a potential dating partner? Or is he just complaining about the things that everybody needs to go through when selecting friends/boyfriends/girlfriends/etc?
Screening women to see if they’re interesting enough to date is a waste of Brandon’s valuable time. Trolling on a blog where no one agrees with him and no one ever will is a-okay.
Brandon, you will never meet anyone interesting that way. You can’t win the lotto if you don’t buy a ticket =P
That’s normal.
Don’t try to sell that as “women suck” or “I’m so dominant.”
Only being attracted to a minority of people, and only clicking on a date with an even smaller minority, is the human fucking condition.
Boring people’s responsibility for being boring is they don’t get to date you. Their loss!
Interesting people’s responsibility for other people being boring is nothing because that makes no sense.
@Holly: You are missing the point. Some men walk away hating women while others just say “fuck this…I could be doing something I like instead of dealing with all this dating bullshit”. If they take the former attitude, I don’t think they are holding anything against the “next woman”. They are just re-prioritizing their life to where friends and Xbox take precedence over dating or actively seeking out a girlfriend.
All this seems to hinge on the idea that women aren’t included in the “friends I hang out with” category as a matter of course. Which is…weird to me. Hanging out playing video games and that sort of thing is, in part, how my last girlfriend and I got together in the first place.
Er, maybe that should be “consequence” instead of “responsibility”? Anyway.
The point is that if you go to twelve bad job interviews and don’t get hired, and then someone finally hires you, they don’t owe it to you to make up for the bad interviews you had with other companies.
You get to say “it was hard to find this job;” you don’t get to say “this job totally sucks because they didn’t make it worth my while to go on all those bad interviews.”
Okay… good for them. That’s fine then. I hope you don’t think anyone here disagrees with that. Plenty of women do the same thing.
But if these guys are posting eighteen-page screeds on how everything is wrong with women and women are ripping off their valuable “points,” that’s not moving on with their lives.
@Holly: I hate to burst your bubble, but a lot of straight men are attracted to most women (at least physically). In fact, if I walk down the street, I bet I would be attracted to 75 out of 100 women I walk by. The same is said of my male friends, father, uncles, male co-workers, etc… We can pretty much pick any woman walking down the street and talk about why she is attractive.
I spent my leisure time tonight hanging out with friends, crocheting and listening in as MrB did a solo run through the Umbra, trying to rescue one of the few surviving copies of the Silver Record as the Eye of the Wyrm was opening in the Prime plane. (He didn’t do all that well. The GM designed the children of the Destroyer well.)
The video gaming as a substitute for having any social life at all reminds me of a couple of guys I went to high school with, smart and interesting but were doing a lot of horrible homophobic trolling of anyone they suspected was gay or a dyke to get their kicks in their spare time. Both of course professed wanting to have sexual relationships with women but didn’t really have the social chops along with being bright to work out what a girl might want out of a relationship besides the sex. One of these guys came out of the closet as gay (or probably bi as last I heard he’s in a long-term with a woman), the other is a 40-year-old virgin, lives in a share-house with several other MGTOW game players with NO social lives… I keep waiting to hear of another uncloseting, but in vain. Maybe by the next 10 year reunion? (My high school was in rural Australia, so there were plenty of dumb, uninteresting guys too, damnit.) I know it’s bad of me, but because of knowing this guy I have a mental stereotype of adult male gamers as closeted homophobic anti-social virgins, which I really have to try hard not to prejudice my thinking… XD
I’ve sent like four emails to Schwyze (all at once) and I posted twice on The Pervocracy message board, (with no intent to spam or harass, they were legitimate posts). Aside from that, and Manboobz of course, and the Good Men Project a few times, and Ozymandias’ site a few times, I haven’t ever posted on a feminist site. So, I’m not the best person to ask.
@Dracula: I have female friends in my social circle. But certain topics can only really be discussed around other men. When women are around, we watch our mouths.
So you say, but I bet your ‘random selections of women’ focus on the beautiful ones.
@Xanthe: It’s not really a substitute for having a social life because you can actually have a social life around video games.
If you’re attracted to someone but don’t want to date them, then you… don’t want to date them. What’s the difference?
If it makes you feel better, although I’m attracted to a lot less than 75% of men, I’m attracted to plenty of guys who I wouldn’t want to date.
Um… so?
I feel like you’re trying to imply there’s some sort of screaming injustice against males in this basic-human-condition stuff.
Brandon: Can’t say I’ve ever had that problem. I guess we just run in different circles.
@ Xanthe: I just graduated from a games programming course. I was the only girl. I reckoned about 90% of the guys to be virgins. I mean, most of the guys I know, talk about sex on a regular basis. These guys did not bring it up at all.
@Rutee: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have friends that like certain women that I wouldn’t label as attractive. But they can see something attractive about them.
“@Xanthe: It’s not really a substitute for having a social life because you can actually have a social life around video games.”
Shit talking down a headset doesn’t really count O.o
@Joanna: Or inviting a bunch of people over to your place to play a game together?!
I also want to throw in here that I play video games with my boyfriend.
Part of the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing is that you both enjoy doing things together. If it’s just a “can I use your genitals?” “okay, if I can use you as a therapist/financier” thing, that’s… not really a relationship.
Sorry folks, but I had to go back to remind myself exactly what Brandon was trying to say…
“The main point of that article is effort vs reward. Playing video games and hanging out with your buddies takes far less effort and energy then going out trying to meet women at bars, clubs, etc…”
Doesn’t this depend on what sort of reward you want? For instance, if you’re hungry, you make/buy/eat food even though it’d be easier to fire up the play-station… If you want to hang out with people, then I could see playing games with your friends being easier than trying to make new ones… But if you’re trying to find someone to have sex with, inviting your (presumably mostly male) friends over wouldn’t exactly be very rewarding (presuming you are straight as well).
So are you going out to find women at bars and clubs and etc… to date? Or to invite to a round of blood gultch ctf? If you’re looking for a date, yeah, it’s gonna be tough. If you’re looking for friends? May not be as hard as you think.
“@Joanna: Or inviting a bunch of people over to your place to play a game together?!”
Yes but you need friends first which requires the effort of meeting people in person =P
And you can have a social life talking about pretty boys that you watch on TV having sex with each other with friends on the internet. You can do this in spaces where men are so rare that everyone is assumed female until declared otherwise. You can even have whole social groups, of people you know in real life, who are friends of yours, who you’ve know for years, who you first met because of this! I’m sure Brandon probably doesn’t because a) Brandon’s world revolves around Brandon b) Brandon probably doesn’t think women interact with each other when men aren’t around and c) Brandon has never seen it, thus it doesn’t happen.
And Joanna’s Oatmeal cartoon would be something like the other guy – the one who’s in a long-term relationship, that is – he actually does things socially. With his partner. Like going out and doing sky-diving/snorkelling/dining with friends/visiting art galleries/going to concerts or shows. As opposed to staying at home glued to the computer and trash-talking on a head set. (40-y.o. is no longer living at home with his parents, so small steps I suppose?)
Wait, now Men Going Their Own Way is just a bunch of dudes having a video game party? Why is NWOslave so bitter about this? That actually sounds kinda fun, can I pla–
Oh, wait. I have a vagina. Dammit.
Brandon wrote, “But certain topics can only really be discussed around other men. When women are around, we watch our mouths.”
Like what?
@Molly:
“Brandon wrote, “But certain topics can only really be discussed around other men. When women are around, we watch our mouths.”
Like what?”
Presumably ‘Men rule, women drool.’
@Molly: Like what girls we want to fuck. Doesn’t really go over well with the ladies
Which women are sluts who put out. He’s been over this before.
I gotta say, although we are not competitive gamers and have no plans of headset FPS any time in hte next ever, why is this inferior to the other activities? The important part is that they’re a: Alone, and b: assholes about it, not how they ultimately choose to spend their free time (Although the trash talking itself is pretty assholish).
“@Molly: Like what girls we want to fuck. Doesn’t really go over well with the ladies”
I love those conversations! Especially when I can go “What? Her? Really?” and they’re all like “Why? What’s wrong with her?”
You’d think that if you could have a group of men and women, where they were free to talk about who they’d like to fuck, you could easily figure out where your ideal fuck-buddy would be interested or not. Sounds like it could be a win-win, as long as sex wasn’t something to be demonized and women weren’t constantly subject to propositions by strangers and we lived in awesomeland.
Hey Brandon, quick question. Did you read my response to your stuff a ways back yet? I wanna know whether you give a shit about actually debating something or not…
@Molly: Like what girls we want to fuck. Doesn’t really go over well with the ladies
Seems like this would depend more on the specific ladies involved in the conversation than the mere presence of ladies.
Sometimes I just read what Brandon writes and blink. You can’t be in a group of friends of mixed genders and talk about fucking? Like, this never has happened in Brandon’s world ever?
This is an example of everything that’s wrong with being super straight and super vanilla…
@Joanna: Well then, you are in the minority. Maybe you should yell at your sisters to lighten up. Because if 9 out of 10 women (with you being the exception) make a snarky remark or criticize us for talking about that stuff…guess what? We won’t talk about those things around women. It’s just easier to wait until you leave to talk about those things.
The whole “the path of least resistance” thing.
The funniest thing is when I’m in a social space where some doodz think they can’t be overheard, and I get to listen in on the locker room type shit which comes out. You’re quite right, it doesn’t go over well! Usually I just think, way to show what a douche you are. Of course if I’m with a girlfriend we’ll probably have a giggle about their stupidity XD
“Well then, you are in the minority.”
Nope. Plenty of me out there. You’re just not looking hard enough ^_^
Brandon: Do all the women you know read Cosmo?
@Kirby: umm…what did you want to talk about?
You refer to women who will have sex on the first date as “sluts who will put out”. There is a fair amount of gender policing fromw omen that contributes to the environment you describe. Women are also, by no means of the imagination, the only people who do this. You do it just as hard; pretending that referring to a woman who will have sex, using those words, isn’t equally gender policing is laughable at best.
@Brandon:
About how you seemed to be equating the rewards of playing halo with your friends and finding a girl to date. *shrug*
“Usually I just think, way to show what a douche you are. “
Again, this depends on the people. The guys I know talk about sex without sounding like douchebags.
Brandon:
You could … hang out only with the intelligent ones? Or are there so few of them that the restriction would be tantamount to celibacy, like avoiding women who always lie.
So men are the thin-skinned, oversensitive ones.
Also, for some reason this is totally Joanna’s problem. Brandon couldn’t possibly just ask women to be more polite or anything.
Yeah, I’ve never experienced that.
Well, shit, go off and do something else for an hour …
Because if 9 out of 10 women (with you being the exception) make a snarky remark or criticize us for talking about that stuff…guess what? We won’t talk about those things around women. It’s just easier to wait until you leave to talk about those things.
I thought you didn’t care what people think.
Ooo, DKM, MRAL, and Brandon in one thread! All we need is NWO to show up and it’ll be Troll Christmas!
@Xanthe: And that is the reasons why a lot (most) men don’t talk about it. Because you turn around and judge us as being “douches”. We don’t want to hear that negativity, so we don’t talk like that around women.
So Joanna wants to talk about that stuff and Xanthe calls us “douches”. And there are far more Xanthe’s than there are Joanna’s from my own personal experiences.
@Rutee: If you want to put a negative connotation on “slut” be my guest. I don’t.
Brandon:
9 out of 10 people here make snarky remarks and criticize you for talking about…everything you talk about, really. (The 10th is DKM showing up to say “Brandon wins!”
Here comes Owlyslave
Here comes Owlyslave
Right down Owlyslave lane!
See, Brandon, it doesn’t matter whether or not you have positive or negative personal connotations with the word slut. American culture as a whole has already decided that slut is a derogatory term.
Oh, wait, that’s right, cultural norms can’t affect you. Because you’re a special snowflake.
I like how Brandon puts quotes around “douches”, like calling someone “a slut who will put out” isn’t actually douchey. It is when you’re so sex negative that you think consent is impossible and you can’t even discuss sex in front of someone who’s the opposite gender!
I like how we’ve gotten from an article that says “women are horrible soul-sucking monsters who will eat all your manly energies before they put out” to statements like:
“I’m not romantically compatible with all women, or even all attractive women.”
or
“Sometimes dating is frustrating so you do other things instead.”
or
“I prefer to socialize with other men sometimes.”
I’m forgetting the word for this sort of thing, this attempt to reframe hateful ideas as incredibly obvious ones, but it’s at least stupid and I’m pretty sure it’s disingenuous. It’s like linking to an article on “sluts are disgusting filth” and then going “what? why is everyone so offended? I’m just saying that some people have more sexual partners than others.”
Bullshit. Even if you are so stupid as to think you can divorce a word entirely from the culture you’re from, you can not be so dimwitted as to think everyone automatically mindreads what you’re saying or believes you when you say you truly do mean it this way. Even you possess a greater clarity of mind than this demands. I do not believe you believe a word of what you just said.
Kirby, you realize I will never be able to hear that song again without thinking of NWOslave, right?
I think you just ruined Christmas.
“And there are far more Xanthe’s than there are Joanna’s from my own personal experiences.”
And that’s why you gotta get out there and find those Joanna’s XD
@Katz: We are talking about women IRL…you know like “away from the computer”. Not the women that frequent this website.
I get more hostility here than any place where I am around women IRL. So I can only come to the conclusion that women here are not representative of women IRL.
Joanna, quite right, but I was specifically talking about men who are using locker room language, completely unvarnished, in the mistaken belief they can’t be heard. Needless to say, these guys are complete strangers – and I’d like to keep it that way. But I feel sorry for the women they’re talking about, since objectifying them and slagging them off at the same time seems to be a typical theme.