The Men’s Rights Subreddit: A net exporter of hate
A new shipment of angry MRAs is on its way!
Oh, Reddit, not again. So about a week ago, a woman posted what seemed to be a heartfelt and sorrowful confession to r/confession with the self-explanatory title “I cheated on my sweetheart of a husband for 3 years with my violent, abusive ex. This is the one secret I am taking to my grave.”
Now, r/confession purports to be a subreddit devoted to helping out those who confess their wrongdoings, and the sidebar warns potential commenters not to be abusive: “No personal attacks, we are not here to make people feel bad.”
But Reddit being Reddit – that is, a hotbed of resentful “nice guys” always looking for an excuse to vilify women in general or a woman in particular – many of the commenters attacked the OP as an evil “scumbag,” or worse. While the worst comments were deleted by the mods, many attacks on the OP remain, some with literally hundreds of upvotes. Those who expressed any degree of empathy for the OP found their comments roundly downvoted.
After a few days, the discussion died down.
But then, after several days of silence, a new wave of abusive comments started to appear. Like this one:
And this:
Oh, but there’s more:
I’ve saved the worst for last. (I’ve also included the response from the confessor herself.) TRIGGER WARNING for violence.
.
.
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So how did a dead thread like this come to life again, and so unpleasantly? Well, you guessed it: it got linked to in r/mensrights and later in r/redpill, a smaller and even more extreme “men’s rights” subreddit. And indeed, if you look at the comment histories of the people I’ve just quoted, you’ll see that most of them also posted in either r/mensrights or r/redpill around the time they made these comments.
It’s a fair guess that many of the upvotes that these terrible comments got also came from visiting r/menrights-ers.
Back in r/mensrights, one commenter, disgusted by all this, chronicled some of the bad behavior of his MRA comrades:
A lot more people besides IBM2431 are going to have to stand up and speak out if they want to clean up r/mensrights’ well-deserved reputation as a net exporter of hate.
Not that r/confession is absolved of blame here. While commenters there piled on this woman, who seemed sincerely sorry for what she said she had done, the r/confession regulars found nothing wrong with the behavior of another commenter — a dude, of course — who confessed he’d “fapped” a number of times to cam footage he found of a friend of his sister’s masturbating — which was evidently recorded and put online without her knowledge or consent.
NOTE: By the time this post goes up, it’s possible and even likely that the mods of r/confession will have deleted the worst of the comments from the r/mensrights and r/redpill invaders. But they should still be visible in the comment histories of those who posted them.
Posted on January 28, 2013, in are these guys 12 years old?, douchebaggery, hate, hundreds of upvotes, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, reddit, taking pleasure in women's pain, trigger warning and tagged men's rights, misogyny, MRA, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 451 Comments.
i probably shouldn’t be reading about garbage people while feeling like garbage.
And they say they aren’t a hate group or abuser’s lobby. Uh-huh.
I wonder what they would say to a man who confessed to cheating with an abusive ex.
@inurashii, internet hugs if you want them. :) And no, not a good place to go if you’re in a sad place.
Maybe this is their actual activism: they want the right to spew their hate wherever and whenever, without condemnation, and they’re posting their shite all over the place to try to change the norms around this behaviour.
Nope, just keeps showing the rest of us what awful human beings you are.
I’m starting to think someone needs to sit down and explain to these men what men’s rights issues really are, and maybe also a register-him page.
Alpha fucks, Beta bucks.
Oh, and should have posted this above: internet safety tip – don’t post confessions online. It is unlikely to make you feel better and you open yourself up for the shitstorm like David has copied here. No matter what you did, having a shitstorm come at you is Not Something You Deserve. It also doesn’t cancel out your deed. If you need to talk to someone, go see a trained counsellor.
/internet safety tip spiel mode disengaged
It’s kind of funny, I kind of got informally banished from reddit by some creeps who went through my comments history to dig up a bunch of embarrassing dirt on me, which because they now all have me RES tagged with it, means it may very well follow me everywhere on that site now. Oh well, I needed a vacation from it anyway.
Men’s Rights Activism: making sure every woman who’s done something wrong hears that she is a c**t who should die, oh and by the way if a man does the exact same thing it’s also the woman’s fault.
My partner and I used to put our blog posts on Reddit. After a bunch of these idiots attacked her over a feminist poem she published, we both ran screaming.
inurashii, hope you feel better.
I made the mistake of looking at r/redpill. o_o
Anon, being unable to visit Reddit is a blessing in disguise.
This r/redpill thread may be the saddest thing I have ever read. It’s just … I don’t know why it’s never occurred to these guys that women are human beings.
HB9? Was he dating a pencil?
I’m using a Mirado Black Warrior HB2. HYPERGAMY.
Seriously, it’s a nice pencil.
I’m not saying the MRA’s responses were appropriate, and it’s stupid to take THIS ONE woman’s behavior as indicative of ALL women, as some of them so love to do, but if I’m totally honest the person I feel most sorry for in this debacle is her “sweetheart of a husband”.
Sigh. I’m stuck in the Bic Zone.
It’s like an entire culture failed to tell them that there are ~3.5 billion people who are also human beings, and by the way they aren’t possessions or puzzle boxes.
Bloody blockquotes!
Really? “You’re a cunt you deserve to die” registers as less important than ” marital problems”?
You do realize that you can condemn her cheating on him while ALSO NOT PLACING A HIERARCHY ON WHICH IS WORSE BECAUSE SERIOUSLY SHE DOES NOT DESERVE THAT KIND OF HATE SPEWED AT HER, right?
And this is it in a nutshell.
This feels like the fandom boards at AMC. Male characters can deal drugs, murder and cheat and fans go easy. Women characters doing anything gets rounds and rounds of “cunt must die!!!!” I guess that’s a symptom of misogyny — even if the people in question are fake. Breaking Bad? Mr. White makes meth, kills his rivals and lies….no problem, his wife Skylar cheats on him one time before, and she gets a Facebook page dedicated to her called, “SKYLAR Must Die!” Betty on Mad Men? Pffft. The Andrea hate on Walking Dead is positively mind-boggling.
Niceguy shaming: because involuntary celibacy isn’t quite punishment enough.
As I read this I can’t help but thinking of the female MRA (can’t remember her name) who came to this blog and had wrote a blog post about how her male friend was practically a hero for cheating on his wife so she could feel like the good guy in a divorce. Seriously. Fuck these people with their painfully stupid black and white way of thinking. Men = good and women = bad is so oversimplified as to be useless to any meaningful conversation about any subject.
I’m being reminded of all those sad MRA lists of their requirements in a partner, like the (now deleted) one by Mr Neackbeard Chronicles:
You don’t need to read beyond Item #1, and I don’t need to add anything to this.
Why, that is a wonderful list which in way awakens in me the rage against injustice.
In other news in backwards land, it’s still wonderfully warm where I am and I am not currently wishing I could find my old ratty super-comfortable sweater.
*in NO way
I guess having a threesome with another woman isn’t cheating, because that’s the kind of lesbian sex women don’t actually enjoy because it’s done purely for the benefit of any men watching.
Imagine being “Bisexual and open to the idea of threesomes” and a “Virgin, but willing to learn”. Imagine being attracted to both men and women and up for a threesome, and all of the sexual adventures you could have… and denying yourself those so you can save your virginity for a total arsehole… no wonder Mr Neckbeard claimed he was single and would probably remain so forever. Honestly Mr NB- it’s not us, it’s you.
“This r/redpill thread may be the saddest thing I have ever read. It’s just … I don’t know why it’s never occurred to these guys that women are human beings.”
Wait, that thread reads:
“I didn’t talk to women for a long time, then I saw a hot women in a shoe shop and asked her out. She was nice but couldn’t. I think asked out another hot women I didn’t know and she agreed to go out with me, but we turned out incompatible. What am I doing wrong?”
I mean if you get annoyed about being successful with women because it is unfair they rejected you, you probably can’t win
Pear_tree- basically he’s saying “I got rejected by one woman, then another said yes but it didn’t work out”. To me that sounds like a pretty standard experience of dating, and like he’s been doing pretty well, all things considered! Does he really expect every woman to say “yes” and then to be 100% compatible with him?
…mind you, “but we turned out incompatible” coming from an MRA probably means she did something utterly heinous, like forgetting to shave her legs one day.
That guy’s problem is that he needs to either ask out some women, or just a woman. Dating a women never works out.
I cover all this and more in my book Salisbury Peenfeels’ The Art of Mystery Game One Night Stands Hot Sex Buy Louis V5itton Peni5 Enhancers For Last All Night.
Why are there so many of these guys? I mean, I get that there will always be some men like that, and some people who are just horrible, but enough to form whole communities? And why are so many of them young? No, it is not normal for so many young people to be so angry and hateful. I see it at my university too. I hear ‘sex is impossible to get for guys’ all the time, and they have just given up. Whenever I go out with a young guy I hear a woman described as a cunt or a bitch every other sentence. I know it’s not everyone, of course, but it is a large percentage of them, and there’s this incredible anger under the surface for so many of them, an anger I don’t see in the vast majority of the female students, or in older guys. Will they grow out of it maybe? Because I dread to think of these guys growing up, being in leadership positions, and still being the same way. This is not the way things should be.
It just frustrates and baffles me so much sometimes, and today is one of those days. And what’s the solution? (I know there is no good answer to this, I’m mostly just venting)
Yes, the Stepford Knife, I agree with you. I have failed to get dates before because the guy showed interest but I’m not socially able so didn’t know what to do next. I don’t blame the guy for this. It is odd but some of the stories there aren’t even sad because they have been reasonably successful.
Carley, I’ve heard it opined that this is a backlash; that the Rush Limbaugh’s of this world have been creating a space for spewing misogynistic drivel, and the reason it’s okay when he spews it is because it’s anti-feminist, and to a large number of people that makes it great. And when he spews it then it makes room for the guys to say it.
And that creates a space where this anger is acceptable to all these guys you meet to throw right out there for you to see.
Will they outgrow it? I don’t know. I know that I had to outgrow the misogyny I grew up steeped in, largely through this site and others like it. So I know they’re capable of it.
TBH, Stepford Knife, I am almost positive that list must be a Poe. Sure, we’ve seen some amazingly deluded shite from MRAs, but “curtsies whenever I walk into the room” – this reads more like someone sane mocking the exaggerated and offensive expectations MRAs have of women. Of course, I could be wrong, but that’s my gut feeling with this one… Then again, it would be such a good satire of MRA’s “standards” because, buried under rationalizations and with less on-the-nose wording, this is not that far from what they seem to demand.
Oh look, truthy is here to keep us company.
Protip for truthy: if you constantly talk about women like they’re possessions and get enraged that you have been denied one, you’re probably not a nice guy. You may, however, be a Nice Guy™.
And no, “involuntary celibacy” is not punishment enough, because it’s not a punishment.
aworldanonymous, if you are looking for an online community to fill the time created by the Reddit vacation, and this site doesn’t suffice/the subject matter here gets too depressing sometimes, may I recommend Captain Awkward? (Please ignore me if you already know of them/others have already recommended them.) Their commenter community is a bunch of lovely people who frequently refresh my faith in humanity, even though I am so far only a lurker there (never had anything to add to the discussion so far, but enjoy reading it).
I find it funny. Don’t they realize that the very reason that they don’t get dates is because of this drivel that they constantly spew?
On another note.. This guy I know had a mail order bride. She didnt speak much English, but even she knew something was wrong with him. I mean, he’s 40, and shares his bedroom with his brother. Worth a lol for me:D
Truthy: that would maybe be true if a.) icel were a thing, and b.) like Tulgey said, an actual punishment.
Ha ha, Truthy quotes me but then follows up with a non sequitur. At least, I wasn’t aware that saying that men should view women as human beings was “shaming.”
I am glad I don’t live in Truthy’s world.
Actually, my favorite comment in that redpill thread was (I am paraphrasing, because I am not going back there): “I know this really hot woman who is dating an engineer. Dude doesn’t even lift weights!”
That redpill thread – am I missing something? He never had a girlfriend until he asked a woman out. Duh! Wonder why that was!
Wait, wait! I know this one! Misandry?
Of course it’s really the fault of the government for not supplying him with a girlfriend ….
@titianblue, oh that guy. He’s got his own wordpress account, and it is just sad. I tried reading it, and got thoroughly depressed. Last I saw he actually had a date, fucked it up royally, and ran away because a couple of comments weren’t pitying enough. What is it with these guys?
I liked his conversation with Pierre, though.
http://pierre.thecomicseries.com/comics/11
LOL! Poor Pierre. He gets all the sad cases. But this is a keeper.
Here you go.
I think the nice guys finish last and bad boys get the girls pop culture myths have convinced a lot of young men that the worse they behave the more likely they are to get what they want.
When it doesn’t work they become angry and double down on the asshattery.
I have no idea what to say about these d00dz who think women should get the death penalty for everything they do.
My attempt to find the blog of government girlfriends dude ended in failure, but I did find what appears to be India’s answer to The Onion.
http://www.fakingnews.com/2011/09/iit-students-ask-government-to-provide-them-girlfriends/
Cassandra, here if you’re brave:
http://governmentsgetgirlfriends.wordpress.com
Be warned. His boner has a sad, so it’s the end of the world. And the whole government thing is sort of, well, odd.
Oh, there’s his blog! He was commenting earlier from the placeholder blog Government Girlfriends and I thought he’d just erased his blog’s content. I rejoice to find otherwise!
@katz, please tell Pierre!
And warn him, too.
Brain bleach: The Tiniest Kittens.
http://izzyheartsrox.tumblr.com/post/41663293625/windatyourfeels-aklsjdfa-lkjfd-afububububu-3
Everyone can go home now, the internet is over.
Wow, government girlfriends guy has had way more dates than me.
And yet, somehow my life is not ongoing torture, indicating that it’s something else that’s wrong.
One of the weirdest things about his blog is his griping that his online dating ads get responses from “low quality” women. Who does he think will sign on for a government-sponsored dating agency? The “highest quality” women of all? Really?
“Oh, the pain of incel in a time when the government girlfriend agencies only get, like, HB5s and HB6s! I may be so involuntarily celibate that I’m literally debilitated by it, but a guy’s gotta have standards, you know?”
These morons make me glad dating was never a thing in my life – I know they’re vastly outnumbered by good, decent, ordinary men but the thought of having met up with one of them is pukologous. They’re like the most toxic boys at my high school with added creepiness (and most of the boys in my year would have done a favour to the world if they’d jumped into the nearest midden).
I wonder just what it is GG thinks he has to have to save his life? Orgasms? Hello, Rosy Palm is always there to help, and she’s the only one you’ve any right to demand attention from.
I also wonder if they think their precious “incel” is something women suffer? Probably not, since they seem to think we’re malfunctioning sexbots with no lives, agency or nerve endings of our own. But then if virginitiy were a killer how would anyone live past about eighteen? (And note, GG is a lying little turd who’d had sex within the last six months when he first came whining onto this site.)
I am
frequentlyalways bemused by the strange and interesting world of the MRM. He is so desperate for sex, but deserves only “high quality” girlfriends who will love and cherish him for the special snowflake that he is, but apparently he is not “high quality” enough that he can find the perfect HB10 on his own. Either his parents or his government need to step in and do that on his behalf, but only if she’s perfect!Buy a fucking fleshlight already.
“Well, I had my first sort of a date in 2013 and it turned out to be my worst first date ever, to a point where it was downright scary for both.”
The first date of my life was also the worst date of my life up until that point. Not because it was bad, just because logic requires the previous statement to be true.
It’s endlessly fascinating that men who fantasize loudly about beating women with baseball bats also complain about not getting enough head-pats for being such nice guys. Gee, why don’t women appreciate them and their niceness?
In all fairness, it’s clear that stam is actually just lonely, and he’s looking for a cure to loneliness. Because he’s a dope, he thinks that sex or going on a date or somesuch will solve his problem, and he gets frustrated when it doesn’t. He can’t come to terms with the real problem: His own stunted emotional inability to bond with people.
Peartree, he actually did mean his first date of 2013, I think, since even he admits that he’s had a date every few months for years.
It was his letter to the government requesting that they send him a girlfriend within two weeks. Somehow I actually do believe that he wrote it and sent it to the Department of Whatthefuck and expected a response. There’s something about him that makes me think he really did that.
That, and his elaborate plan for governmental dating agencies for which high quality women will sign up in droves to date men like him, who can’t get girlfriends otherwise. He’s one of those who think that women never, ever have problems getting a date, but somehow he thinks that they will still eagerly sign up to go on a blind date with someone like him.
How do you hold these ideas at the same time?
Wow, I just got further through that, that guy is fairly messed up and taking it out on the women he dates. That is incredibly scary :(
Oh, lord. That guy’s life story is depressing and scary. He got obsessed with some girl, told her he would kill her and himself, and was arrested. Then, just this last year, he basically extorts some woman into sex by posting her pictures on some blog. Naturally, he blames the woman for the failure of that relationship. Also, he thinks that psychologists are his enemy and that incel is the Terminator.
…maybe we should stop talking about him?
I read the last blog entry of the government girlfriends guy and I wonder what this guy wants. He goes on a date with a woman. After 15 minutes he decides there is no attraction, okay. But then he goes on to tell her his life story and how pitiful he is and how he wants to kill himself! And she’s supposed to listen and comfort him, even though he has no interest in him and probably just expected to go on a casual date to get to know a guy better she met online?
I just had to stop at one point because I couldn’t take anymore of his self pity (like how the poor woman, who I bet totally didn’t expect an emotionally fragile guy she had to comfort, uses the wrong words to comfort him, what a bitch!).
Tulgey – you’re right. He’s a stalker and a criminal, not some pitiable/laughable idiot, from that. Too creepy for words.
@freitag
We asked him that when he was over here, and his response basically came down to “There are a lot of women who are in urgent need of money in this economy”. So, you know, class personified as always.