Men’s Rights White Knights rush in to protect Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan from MRA criticism
Karen Straughan, in an uncharacteristic moment of silence
So FeMRA videoblogger Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan flapped her gums for nearly two hours the other night and sounds came out. This time she wasn’t sitting at her kitchen table blabbing to a webcam about female “hypoagency” and regurgitating misremembered factoids about bonobos but was speaking to an audience of mostly white dudes at Ryerson University in Toronto Canada.
I haven’t watched her performance — which is of course online as well — because life is short, and frankly I’d rather endure this for ten hours than subject myself to the tedious GWW for nearly two.
But I did take a look at a thread on the Men’s Rights subreddit started by a dude who hoped he and his fellow MRAs could have “a proper discussion about the talk, pros and cons, without descending into a circlejerk or a downvote party.” That’s right: he actually wanted GWW’s biggest fanboys to discuss her ideas (such as they are) on their merits.
This did not go over very well with the regulars, who jumped up to defend their favorite damsel in distress. ManUpManDown argued against the very notion of criticizing GWW, on the grounds of 1) her being supercool and 2) giving talks is hard:
Huh. But by NOT offering any criticism, aren’t you in fact treating her not as a writer or activist or, god forbid, a thinker, but precisely as a mascot?
Still, a few brave MRAs did bring up substantive critiques of her talk. For example, both 2095conash and memetherapy noted that she probably said “Right?” too often. Bluecharge, while proud of her performance, noted with brutal honesty that her “way of wrapping up points by saying ‘so there you go’ was a bit trite.”
So there you go.
Oh, I forgot to mention one dumb criticism some dumb guy made. GWW apparently suggested that if all the men in the world took three days off it would take three years to recover from the disaster that would ensue.
Essemd implied that this was a bit alarmist, arguing that if you gradually replaced men in the workforce with women — over the course of many years — it wouldn’t be the end of the world, because women could do these “men’s jobs” too. “[S]aying either gender is required because this and this job is mainly occupied by men or women is just false,” Essemd concluded.
Luckily there were a few real MRAs around to teach this fella a thing or two. Like Rikevo, who offered the powerful rebuttal that women can’t do shit:
Right?
And xNOM had a little list:
So there you go.
NOTE: I actually had that loop of “What is Love” on during most of the writing of this post. Hey, it’s a catchy song.
Posted on February 8, 2014, in antifeminism, FemRAs, FeMRAsplaining, GirlWritesWhat, internal debate, irony alert, men created civilization, men invented everything, misogyny, MRA, oppressed white men, reddit, women's jobs aren't real and tagged antifeminism, girlwriteswhat, karen straughan, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, reddit, ryerson. Bookmark the permalink. 505 Comments.
I wonder how much overlap there is between these “men run everything” Galt types and the “patriarchy is not real” types.
Why the hell would Karen Straughan be speaking in an academic setting?
Dudez get all uncomfortable at the thought of anyone offering constructive criticism of a woman’s public speaking work. Weird. It’s like they think women should be held to totally different standards, or something.
Amused that he left “no kids” off the “without men” list.
Well, we have those hypergamy-enabling sperm banks. They’ll keep us going for a while, at least.
Also amusing that he doesn’t realize that “no kids” actually would be “the end”.
David, I watched just a snippet of audience questions at the end of her ‘talk.’ He made the point that we live in a society where gender is constructed and she went on and babbled about genetic determinism. He called her on it but was quickly shut down by another CAFE rep who took over Karen’s mic.
She also said at one point in her ‘talk’ that we shouldn’t be concerned that there’s very little to no women in STEM and such because well, DUH! Wimmenz don’t like engineering because infant girls don’t stare a long time at a mechanical object like infant boys do.
DUH! The stupid. It hurts.
PS I informed OPIRG about the talk and informed them that protest wasn’t such a good idea for safety reasons and the effect it would have on MRA’s and the media. ie. getting them press.
They didn’t know about it and informed Ryerson SU, which I think was a good thing. I also emailed the president of Ryerson and told him about the security concerns. Let’s hope these Universities take some national action in Canada to rid their campuses of this misogyny. In my view, it’s a safety issue. Remember MR Edmonton following those women they labeled feminists in the night and then AVFM offering money to find out who they were? Not safe for Canadian campuses imho.
My favorite part was when they started talking about Attila Vinczer’s sob story about the time his 8th grader son was not allowed to hit back when a 1st grader feeeeeeeeeeeeeemale hit him. (After that, a feminist in the audience said maybe no one should hit anyone, and then good old Danny Boy shouted her down, saying “Feminists think it’s okay for women to hit men” or something to that effect.)
Anyway, when they’re discussing that in this thread, one mister says,
Wow, that’s a reasonable comment!
Cue a more upvoted response from an internet tough guy,
As much as I don’t like Straughan, I worry about what all her current fans are going to do to her when she inevitably does something they don’t like.
I swear to all holy fuck that woman is stuffed full of bullshit. And seriously, what kind of head-space to you have to be in to become that much of a quisling? It has to go beyond simple self-loathing.
You know, she could almost start her own cult at this point. She should go talk to her BFF Stephen Molyneux. Fuckwads.
@house mouse queen
What are we defining as ‘mechanical objects’? Because I”m just curious which ancedote with my stepsister I’d need to bring up to prove her wrong…
@cloudiah
I…bwuh? How can someone think it’s okay for a 13/14 yr old to hit a 6 yr old back?
RE: cloudiah
Ooh, tough guy so tough. I’ll bet he’s equally okay with someone getting the drop on him and sends him to the ER. Or draws a weapon. Doesn’t need a battle babysitter, after all.
I tried to find a write-up of the talk as no way am I sitting through her talking. While I didn’t find a neutral review, I did find this piece: http://rabble.ca:9880/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2014/01/voice-mens-new-canadian-misogynist-campaign-cafe-and-ryerson-un
Ye gods. Shouldn’t a 13-year-old have learned that it’s wrong to hit people?
It’s not even that. They just want to be able to hit women with impunity. I hang out on ShitRedditSays and you wouldn’t believe how many douchebros/MRAs whine constantly about how it isn’t fair that they can’t beat the fuck out of a woman who slaps them or spits at them or just does something they don’t like. Equality donchaknow.
It would have been interesting if someone had made up and told a story about a 14 year old girl wanting to hit a 6 your old boy who had hit her, just to watch the hypocrisy play out.
I could have been useful like a man, but then I took an arrow in the knee (NSFW because of language):
List of perfect people, apparently:
* All men
* Girlwriteswhat
Also, ten hours of “What is Love?” is literally my favorite thing.
Help. I can’t parse Xnom’s last one.
“no kids. the end”
He could mean if women disappeared, there’d be no more kids.
He could mean kids are all women contribute to the world.
He could also incidentally be meaning that without kids, it’d be the end of the human race.
Well, Xnom, which one is it? Two of them are false, and the last one is an apocalyptic scenarion outside the bounds of the simulation (Not 3 years, total human exctinction in… 80?).
Insubstantial grammar makes mocking difficult. At least be clear about your misogynist ideas. It’s really all I ask!
Nope, all he means is that without women, there’d be no kids, and that’s the end of the list. Because giving birth is literally all women do.
Oh look, more transmisogyny in r/MensRights – courtesy of u/xNOM. I never expected that! Funny how the mods aren’t calling them out for being transmisogynistic.
I thought womenfolk were supposed to have long hair. My brain implodes.
Got to love all those “99.9999999999999%” factoids about men doing intellectually challenging work and women only pooping out kids. Was this taken from the year 1874? I went to a large public research university in the 80s and science faculty was maybe 15%-20% women. When I went back to grad school, it was about 1/3 in many science departments. And it’s still creeping closer to 50%. Once you start treating women as more than just incubators for kids they start to surprise you with all their sciencing and inventing and hard intellectual thinking. WHO KNEW??????
Also, I work in science. Two things:
1) Science is fucking collaborative. Really fucking collaborative. There are some fields where ten names on one paper is pretty damn normal, and that’s one paper. Not to mention the fact that most science is all about working off of what we already know–it isn’t like new ideas spring from nothing, especially when we’re talking about biology/medicine.
2) There are quite a few women in science–more in biology and chemistry than physics, true, but there are women in physics. Outside of researchers, scientific support staff are, in my experience, overwhelmingly women. You try running a lab without a stockroom manager*, safety officer, someone to maintain the cell culture room** etc. Nobody wants that. Administrative support staff are also overwhelmingly women, and someone has to do the payroll, or suddenly you won’t have any researchers.
* The chemistry stockroom manager quit mid-year once when I was in college (I heard rumors she was mistreated by some of the profs). The general chemistry lab had to rejigger the entire rest of the semester because the last couple of labs were absolutely not possible without her help. (Incidentally, the professor who ran that class was a woman.)
** I have no idea what her position is called, but I love her to bits. She deals with the biohazard waste so I don’t have to and makes sure we always have plenty of sterile pipets. I have enough repetitive manual labor in my job without dealing with that shit.
Beloved’s car had a flat a couple years ago. I changed it. With my penis.
They’ll probably do what all the FeMRAs minimize when it happens to another woman–get a shit ton of threats. I’d feel bad for her if she wasn’t so awful.
Falconer: Wow.
@Falconer: the car, or the flat?
Thing is, a lot of the big MRAs probably know where she lives. So if they turn on her I’m not sure it will stop at just threats.
And they will turn on her sooner or later, because it’s impossible to be self-effacing enough not to upset these guys if you have a vagina.
@Kiwi Girl: The flat. Ain’t changin’ no car with my junk, what am I, stupid? That would really hurt.
Does she not realise that the MRAs aren’t interested in *her*? That they’re only interested in the parroting of the MRA dot points she does? She is interchangeable with any other woman who would do the same parroting. She’s allowing herself to be operated as a carnival side show curiosity (“roll up, come see the anti-feminist woman”). I don’t think she realises that is the role she has been cast in, and it’s the only speaking/writing role the MRAs have for women.
@Falconer LOL.
Kiwi girl: she won’t realize that until she’s booted out of the treehouse. None of the FeMRAs seem to get it.
Good point
Falconer is the MAN.
There’s a reason we used to call Ryerson “Ry High”. As in “high school”. & that was at my community college.
Well, we’ve just been reliably informed that feminists can’t change flat tires. I’d say Beloved considers herself a feminist, so since that flat tire got changed, I must have done it, mustn’t I?
(Actually I did help — but once we figured out I was tightening the nuts and turned the wrench around, it went a lot smoother.)
@casandrakitty: It would probably stop at threats, because these guys reek of chickenshit, but when it happens (not if) I hope she does take it seriously, in case I’m wrong
The fact that she saw The Wooly Bumblebee get booted and still doesn’t realize that it could just as easily happen to her seems to indicate a certain inability to grasp what’s actually going on.
Denial, not just a river in Egypt
RE: Falconer
Beloved’s car had a flat a couple years ago. I changed it. With my penis.
My husband is duly impressed, bestows golf claps upon you, and requests to learn your ways.
Am I the only one a little bit concerned about the use of the term “White Knight” in the article title? I mean, I am fairly certain most people on here are aware of the massive problems with the term, so… Why are we legitimizing it by using it unironically? It is like using “man-whores” to refer to PUAs, it just doesn’t seem right. :\
@Falconer:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a tyre?
A: Irrelevant, since the men stopped working, all the motor vehicles are old and have fallen into complete disrepair, and women can’t make tyres.
@BreakfastMan: I thought it was being used ironically. Now I’m confused.
I’m getting irony from the title too.
@Kiwi girl. It might be sarcasm.
@Kiwi girl: If it was being used ironically, then I recend my comment, but I don’t see how it is being used ironically. David is using it correctly in the title (well, “correctly” inasmuch as the way it is used in the title is concurrent with the term’s meaning), and there isn’t really anything in the body to make it seem like its use is ironic.
Breakfastman: maybe because it’s the MRA go-to for any man who defends a woman? I dunno, ask David.
Having been confused over the meaning of irony for a while vs. sarcasm, I did a google and I think it is ironic because David’s not known for using “white knight” as a put-down. If David did use it as a put-down, then I would agree that it was sarcasm.
My interpretation was along the lines of: David gives lots of examples of men coming to the aid (verbally, physically) being called white knights as a derogatory term by MRAs. Some MRAs are now defending KS. David hasn’t said anything derogatory about this, just pointed out examples where it has happened. Look, MRAs can be white knights too.
And this is why literary interpretation can be BS, especially when one can hope that the author explains their intent. :)
Of course it is of utmost importance to determine if David is using a term ironically, because there is absolutely no other way to read it except as affirmation of the term.
@Kiwi: I was more thinking about someone who has just come to the site for the first time. All the regulars here know that David probably isn’t the guy to use “White Knight” seriously, but a newbie? Not so sure, especially as there isn’t much in the article itself to let them know it is being used disingenuously.
Though I, for one, don’t really put any stock in authorial intent when critically examining a work, so I might be an outlier here. XD
I’d think the “I mock it” might clue the new reader in, though
The fact that David tends to credit his readers with enough intelligence that he doesn’t have to surround words like “white knight” with giant blinking irony signs is one of the reasons I keep reading him.
I think most newbs or lurkers get it. If they don’t, they won’t last long.
“White knights?” Don’t buy into their weak-ass paradigm even if it’s just to make them look hypocritical.
Become a FeMRA and you too can be referred to as a mascot!
And honestly BreakfastMan, I had kind of the same thoughts.
I guess David does need that blinky irony sign to go with the sarcasm one.
Buuuuut…I thought feminists were all lesbians and lesbians all knew how to change tires?
Now I don’t know what generalised stereotype to believe!
@Crane:
I just realised that you might not have received an answer. She wasn’t lecturing or tutoring, she was invited by a campus group to give a talk, though the Canadian Association for Equality (warning: name is a misnomer). Any idiot can be invited to give these.
BreakfastMan: I put fuck all stock in authorial intent too…and I read it absolutely ironically. The term “white knight” is used by MRAs all the time…not long ago GWW used it herself when accusing reddit folks of “white knighting” Anita Sarkesian by not being even more horrible to her.
PLUS when you consider that so much MRA crap is projection. These men don’t think anyone who stands up for a woman could do so on the merits of her argument…they ONLY think a man would agree with a woman if he’s trying to suck up to her and get her into bed. And part of the reason they think that, is because they, themselves don’t ever support a woman unless it’s as a mascot/potential bed partner.
How ironic, then, that this concept (white knighting) which they misattribute to all feminist men, is something they tend to actually do themselves. (Similar to the comment about treating GWW as a mascot).
@cassandra
Pretty sure they aren’t fond of any women, whether they have vaginas or note. :/
@heather
Oh, shit, I’m failing my fellow lesbians XD (though I actually do want to learn how to change a tire soon, it just lacks practical application when one doesn’t have a car…)
@cassandrakitty It isn’t a matter of intelligence, though. It is more a matter of Poe’s law, I think. I mean, I have seen people unironically use terms like “white knight” (among other poisonous terms) whilst mocking MRAs. The term has infected enough of the online discourse that one doesn’t have to be a hardcore Elam-worshiper to use it and mean it, sadly enough. :\
“Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of
DougDavid. I’ve seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than seeDougDavid. Even Dinsdale was frightened ofDougDavid.”“What did
DougDavid do?”“He used… sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire. He was vicious.”
@Breakfastman
I can’t speak for anyone else but all I really thought was that they think it’s fine when MRAs ‘white knight’ but it’s horrible to defend women they don’t like like feminists. I think the chances of someone taking it the wrong way probably aren’t that great, if a new person took it the wrong way they would learn what this blog is about pretty quickly, provided everything else. I would think. But I don’t know. I’m not that old a reader personally. So don’t worry.
If people aren’t willing to figure things out from the context then I really don’t think it’s David’s job (or anyone else’s) to hold their hand and gently walk them through the clue-getting process.
As much as I don’t like Straughan, I worry about what all her current fans are going to do to her when she inevitably does something they don’t like.
Meh. Some women make lifelong careers out of being the Only Girl in the Room and stomping down every other woman who tries to do stuff. I don’t get why this is fun, but something keeps Phyllis Schlafly coming into the office each morning.
I skipped to a random point in the video (good grief, two and a half hours? How many ways can one person say, “bitches, amirite?”) and listened for a few minutes. She was talking about how universities in the U.K. instituted affirmative action for women in science majors, and not only was it a huge failure, but the universities had to CLOSE ENTIRE SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS after all the women dropped out because science was too hard for their tiny brains, and obviously the departments couldn’t bring in new students or have smaller classes, no, the entire school just had to stop teaching chemistry forever.
I would like to know the names of these universities.
I couldn’t find the anti trans stuff Ally mentions on r/Men’srights, but I was momentarily terrified when I saw this headline “Billy Bragg: “I look at the news and despair for my 20-year-old son” (telegraph.co.uk)”. Has my life long hero, the lefty folk sing Bragg turned MRA sympathizer? Say it ain’t so!
The comment by r/men’srights commentors quickly quelled my fears.
Here’s what’s outraged the reddit MRAs. Sorry about the length of the quotes, but it’s Bragg being typically awesome so I went overboard.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10603033/Billy-Bragg-I-look-at-the-news-and-I-despair-for-my-20-year-old-son.html
That is some impressive thathappened.txt
Whoops, I just realized Ally is talking about the quote in this post. Sorry about the brain fart and hope the Bragg post wasn’t too off topic.
Oops, I meant to blockquote a totally different part of that, but I am a klutz:
I giggle-snorted at the contention that maintenance and construction would be crippled. Tell that to my relatives in engineering, architecture, and in the sheet metal workers union.
Also, great grandma was a computer programmer… Silly!
Then I giggle-snorted more when he forgot that without men: no children, the end.
Then I found out Katz had that thought first. Katz, you rule.