Hey famous dudes who are betas! Watch the heck out! If some comely lass wearing an I HEART Dworkin t-shirt starts whispering sweet nothings in your ear, she could be a SECRET RADFEM trying to seduce you into SJWism so she and her RadFem comrades can take advantage of your fame in order to spread evil SJW lies.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can take the word of a couple of random Redditors instead. In Kotaku in Action, the main Gamergate hangout on Reddit, azriel777 sadly reports that
But it is Earl_of_sandwiches who CONNECTS THE DOTS and somehow manages to work French Trotskyists and polyamory into the mix.
This conspiracy theory strikes me as being roughly as convincing as one of Ralph Wiggum’s tall tales on The Simpsons
Nonetheless, lets take a few moments to unpack some of the most egregious nonsense in Earl’s comment.
“Entryism” is a tactic pioneered by French Trotskyists in the 1930s, acting at the behest of Mr. T himself. The wily Trots joined a larger social democratic group en masse, hoping to sneakily nudge it towards Leninism. While the strategy “successfully raised the group’s membership to 300 activists,” as Wikipedia notes, the social dems figured out what was going on and started throwing the Trots out.
You may wonder what on earth this has to do with Earl’s little conspiracy fantasy. I do too, as I’m pretty sure that the notion of using sex to manipulate people predates Trotskyist “entryism” by many thousands of years.
Ok, but what about all that non-exclusive relationship stuff? Well, you know how obsessed these guys are with “cucking.” In their imaginary world, one of the prime life goals of women today — including the evil RadFems — is to have sex with as many cocky Alpha Males as possible, preferably while married to some hardworking beta schlub unaware that the children he’s raising aren’t really his own, spermwise.
Apparently, “It’s Raining Men” is the secret RadFem anthem.
Ok, but isn’t it true that Jim Sterling — the longtime Gamergate foe mentioned in the comment — actually is a big ol cuck? I mean, didn’t his wife ADMIT this????
Apparently she did in fact once say that she and her husband had an open marriage in which they both were allowed to see other people. I’m not sure why that would be relevant to anything, but the Gamergaters have assembled one of their famous infographics on the subject, complete with little arrows and stuff underlined in red.
I’ve now officially run out of evens for today, so while we’re on the subject of The Simpsons, which we were a little while ago, here’s 5 minutes of Homer getting horribly injured in every possible way and then some.
@ kat
In England “you people” can have a mildly disparaging tone (although it can be quite innocuous “You people have done a great job” etc); but it doesn’t necessarily have the racist overtones. It’s more aimed at particular individuals rather than classes of people.
Alan Partridge uses it a lot as seen here:
https://youtu.be/yUY8wFaG1FE
I’ve definitely seen “you people” in English literature as well. It’s just one of those linguistic oddities that pop up – an in itself innocuous, even meaningless, phrase, that picks up a lot of baggage through use.
Otherwise, thanks for the elucidation and discussion, everyone! I’ve certainly seen a disparity between “radical feminism” as in “feminism that is radical” – as in, addressing all aspects of society, not restricted to respectable middle-class electoral politics, and so on – and “Radical Feminism”, as in a specific movement with specific beliefs. The former, well, we’re pretty much practicing it here, talking about all sorts of social issues in a feminist context. The latter, I’m less familiar with – my knowledge of the literature kind of skipped a wave.
It’s Pride week here. I think this sign means our trams have special seating for lesbians. :p
@ IP
What is that sign actually for? Is it a Heimlich maneuver thing?
@Alan
I wasn’t joking. It actually is what I said it is.
@ IP
Oh that’s so sweet 🙂
If anyone was confused by this, you were right to be. My intention was to reference Inigo (Princess Bride), “you keep using that word…” but my brain skipped several steps along the way.
Axecalibur,
Whenever someone tries to do the “men and women should have equal abortion rights” gotcha, I trip them up by agreeing with them. Trans men should have just as much right to abortion as cis women. Abortion is not some female privilege we use to nefariously deny men reproductive rights. It’s about the bodily autonomy of a person who is pregnant. It’s about the right to not be pregnant against one’s will. Someone doesn’t have abortion rights because they’re women. They have them because they’re pregnant.
Pitshade,
Inconceivable!
@WWTH
Ooh, I love that! I’m yoinking it
Unfortunately for that particular cretin, he tripped himself up faster than I could. Like, here’s a rundown (not exact quotes, it was a year or so ago). Massive turquoise moose incoming
So this dude shows up on a vid about abortion, ranting about debtors’ prisons and corporate personhood. Complete non sequitur, right? So I’m like A)how is that related , and B)what do words mean? He comes back talking about Baby Moses Laws outta nowhere
For the unaware, Baby Moses Laws are basically the government looking the other way on child abandonment, if you drop the kid off at a hospital or whatevs. Ya know, if you’re poor or young and can’t take care of a child, the state would rather you handle the situation responsibly. “That’s misandry!”, cos of course it is, and “Only moms can take advantage of these statutes”. Barely a few minutes of research. I told him how the laws actually work, so he changes tact
“But if I gave my kid up, she’d just get it back and make me pay child support, but not vice versa.” Nope. The authorities will find you, mom or dad, to double check. Men can reclaim custody. “But child support is bad, cos it adds an added layer of tension to an already broken relationship and may end up hurting the kid in the long run.” A semi reasonable point!? I disagree, but we can have a smart conversation about this. Please, rando, do tell me more
As if! 1st and last time the wellbeing of the actual child passed this guy’s mind. Then some antifeminist bullshit about ‘equalism’. Here’s where it gets good. “Women are skanks (read: meee!). Therefore we should ban abortion to make those sloots responsible for their actions.” I can’t stop grinning. Why is he, as provider of sperm and 50% investor in this natal enterprise, not responsible for his actions? “She can get an abortion, eliminating all her responsibility. If she keeps it, I have no choice but to pay up. Unfair. Misandry!” It gets better
But what if he gets custody? That actually happens sometimes. “If women were honest,” great start, guy, “they’d just admit it’s all about getting men’s money.” Remember debtors’ prison and corporate personhood? “Women have taken over the justice system to treat men like ATMs, and, since ATMs are corporate machines… chemtrails?” It got too bizarre to follow at the end. Too much misogyny and the fun was wearing off, so I dipped. Totally worth it, tho…
He also had a thing, where he’d ‘pwn’ someone with his ‘lojik’, and he’d be all “next!” like he won something. He also signed his comments, as if his nym wasn’t right there. Oh, and 1 time he wrote Live Long And Prosper apropos of nothing… Good times
Point is, it’s way better discussing stuff here than BroTube
> Karl
Hear, hear. I am asking myself the same question. Is influence not an alpha thing only ? If those posters do not even keep homogeneity with meaning of the terms they use and which are supposed to be part of their own lingo, how do they expect people to understand what they are saying ? Not that they are really convincing anyway, but at least, they could pretend be firm on their positions.
> Radfem term. I do not know if it is funny, but it always makes me think of the Radmeds in Fallout, agains radiations. Are feminists radioactives ? Or are they a possible solution, a medecine against toxic (masculinity) radiations ? Wonder, wonder…
@ axecalibur
Wasn’t there some real cases of people dropping off their teenage kids until they put an age limit?
How is a beta influential & popular? Doesn’t that make him an alpha by default?
@ Wwaxwork
Depends on his wrist circumference.
@Alan
No idea, but my mom would always ‘threaten’ us with that kinda thing. That or sell us to the Romani. Are there even any Romani around here? It was a lark at the time, but it’s pretty racist, now I think about it… *shrugs*
Yeah, I’m amazed by their ability to redefine ‘beta’ and ‘alpha’ males anytime needed to score on the day’s goalposts. First, being an alpha male was a ‘natural’ thing: you were or you weren’t, right. Your dominance was obvious to any observer, as clear as daylight. Then some PUAs came along to explain how alpha-maling was a skill set, and you could pick it up and use it like any other, and you could fork over your money and learn.
But for that to happen, it seems they had to divorce the alpha male concept from any…solidity? Whether leadership, charisma, connections, money, etc. It would seem obvious that an alpha male is able to use his natural advantage to accumulate a capital that proves his natural advantage, as circular as that. An alpha male, in theory, brings something to the table. You want to be on board with him.
The problem is, this capital looks different all the time because we value different things all the time. A man who is powerful in his field, through money, or being an incredible musician, or being the country’s leader, so on, does not necessarily have to carry himself in a way PUAs associate with alpha males, and sell as alpha male.
So we end up with this weird disconnect where a man who is a tastemaker and luminary in his field, or ridiculously rich through knowing exactly what people want and selling it to them, or talented beyond wildest imaginings with a following of millions, is a ‘beta male’… Whereas an alpha male is a guy who goes miles out of his way to provide no value to anyone, not even himself, because he is that cool and confident. Value is for suckers who picked the wrong pill. In yo face.
So we end up with these working definitions:
Beta male: a guy who can lead, provide, practice skills, offer deliverables, and doesn’t give a shit how he looks doing it.
Alpha male: …the guy ALL THE WOMEN WANT TO BANG CAUSE HE’S CONFIDENT, WE SWEAR.
One of the best ways to distinguish a legitimate thing-to-study from bullshit is the precision of the terms used.
Example:
MRA Terms: Alpha, Beta, Sigma, Gamma, Omega. I’m still waiting to hear meaningful differences between the Alpha and the Sigma, or the Sigma and the Gamma, or the Beta and the Omega, or the … you get it, I think.
Feminist Terms: Heteronormativity, Gender Role, Intersectionality, Patriarchy. All with precise meanings, clearly distinguishable from one another.
Alpha is apparently ‘Assertive man who takes what he wants’. Or ‘Lone wolf who people want to follow’. Or ‘Manly man what don’t need no woman’.
Sigma is apparently ‘Alpha but a little weird’. Or ‘Alpha, no really, it’s different’.
Beta used to be (and is still sometimes) ‘loser who doesn’t assert himself enough so doesn’t get girls’. Or ‘average joe’. Or ‘nice guy who cares about women.’ or ‘Alpha minus assertiveness.’
Omega is (I think?) ‘loser who doesn’t assert himself’
Gamma, I have no idea.
I think the confusion has a lot to do with the fact that many of these guys recognize that they aren’t Alpha Mans, so they blur the lines between. “I’m a beta, but betas have all the attributes of alphas, they just don’t act like them.” “I have the traits of an alpha but no one likes to hang around me, so I must be a sigma.”
It’s all just a bunch of excuses to hide painful truths from themselves. Goalposts on trolleys, easily moved to score goals wherever needed.
Good rationality guys!
Radfems have always been a relatively small group and aren’t the same as second wave. They go beyond rejecting “biology is not destiny” and assert that ALL aspects of gender are completely socially constructed and oppressive. If we were living in a truly just society then the concepts of “men” and “women” wouldn’t exist and we would just be people with either a penis or a vagina.
So in that context, a statement like “all men are abusers” (taken literally) would make sense because (radfems assert) being an abuser is an integral part of socialization into the male gender and part of what it means to be male. When radfems say that all men are trained from birth to be rapists and abusers, they literally mean that. They’re not just saying that men are socialized with privileged attitudes that make them more prone to become abusers.
@ scildfreja
You might have to be English to get this…
@Scildfreja
Hey, Sahyuns Guise. You need falsifiability, fam. How else are ya gonna show off your 1337, Alpha STEM skillz?
Seriously, the best way to deal with any kind of ridiculous idea is to ask em to define their terms. Not, ‘it’s kinda like when’, a real definition. Like your writing the opening paragraph of the entry in Brittanica. Go.
Half of em can’t. The other half does, but it’s all so self contradictory you can just pick it apart until they get too frustrated to continue. It’s like sealioning but with a sturdier foundation. Walrusing? 🙂
@Alan,
@Axecalibur,
Back when I identified as male, I managed to sell my now-ex-girlfriend on Feminism — apparently I got it backwards?
@Chio: The animated Grinch film is very much worth seeing: it isn’t padded out with a lot of weird subplots like the live-action film, it was directed by a classic Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies director (Chuck Jones), and Boris Karloff provides the narration!
Don’t forget the Grinch song!
@scildfreja
Thanks for the help 🙂 I see feminism as a thing that is time consuming to study (100 years of feminism!) but it’s understandable.
Anti-feminism is confusing and sad.
Straw-feminism is much easier and hilarious to study 🙂
That is why I stake my place in the tiny group called “Female Supremacy” and I plan to move that goal post to the end of Absurdia !
It lets me distance myself from feminists based on tenets of toxic masculinity (because a female supremacist cannot be a feminist because feminism doesn’t support supremacy of any specific gender.)
But then I can also take all the feminism and put it in my work.
I thoroughly enjoy being anti-feminist in the way that highlights how important feminism is.
And I totally intend to out-MRA them all the way. Because they wouldn’t know what an actual man issue would be if it hit them in the face. (i.e. this: http://masculinetopics.com/summer-2016-term-paper/)
It’s more fun to do it from a place of actually understanding what feminism is to begin with. These KiA people don’t, they are just terrified of women acting in a way that doesn’t place their interest in the forefront of everything or requires them to be decent human beings before “putting out”. I can harvest their free speech 🙂
Thanks for dragging the bar down all the way down the Mariana Trench guys.
@ scildfreja
Whilst I do conform to a lot of male gender stereotypes, knowing anything whatsoever about football isn’t one of them. 🙂
@pitshade: IIRC, that’s in the live-action film too– something they got right (I also was impressed by Rick Baker’s makeups, but the more clips of the film I see the less interested I am in seeing the whole).
Fair enough. I don’t watch many films and that one looked like one to avoid at any rate.
Oh, you’re not prying! That tag just means I’m on my phone, instead of on my laptop. I felt it best to differentiate the two, because my phone’s much harder to type on. :3
@EJ and SFHC: The copyright block also keeps anyone from monetizing his videos, because, to paraphrase: “If I can’t make any money from my videos and the work I did that went into them, no one else is going to”. Of course, he has his Patreon, so he doesn’t even monetize his videos in the first place, iirc.
Another thing Jim (Fucking) Sterling, son has done: Taken shitty game developers to task for abusing the copyright system.
Hell, he’s got a list of devs who have decided to abuse the system to get his bad reviews of their games taken down, and there’s a handful of them who thought they had enough spine to take him on directly. Muxwell (Earth: Year 2066) and Digital Homicide (The Slaughtering Grounds) come to mind.
And I figure if this happens enough, YouTube might just take notice and finally penalize shitty people for abusing their system.
Of course, that would require YouTube to get off their collective asses and do some work, instead of just leaving it up to an automated system that is very clearly broken.
This is the second time in nearly as many days that I’ve seen GobbleGoops accusing Jim Fucking Sterling, Son of not actually being polyamorous. The other day, somebody was saying that he and a few other “SJWs” just said they were poly to score progressive points, because apparently there’s no such thing as a progressive person who isn’t polyamorous? (I’m not really into polyamory, myself, but all power to you if you are.)
I’m just like, do you guys actually pay attention to his videos? Of course the answer is “no”, because why would they pay attention to anything made by a damn SJW, but he’s not terribly shy about expressing how open and willing he is to have sexy funtimes with people.
@Chiomara
You’d not have had any reason to know, it’s really context specific. Just a handy note for talking to Yanks in future. 🙂
Radical feminism’s hardly a monolith; there are multiple schools of thought within the broad umbrella. Among the disagreements are whether it’s the concept of gender itself that’s the problem vs the concept of gender roles being the issue. It sounds like most of the radfems in Brazil subscribe to the TERFier schools of thought, but I wouldn’t care to hazard a guess as to why that might be. I’m sorry that all the radical feminist groups near you are full of assholes.
Usage and semantics vary, but going by an impression here, beta is the low status, nice enough guy who supplicates to women instead of treating them like shit and supposedly gets used in the process. In contrast, Omega is meant to refer to a man no woman wants for anything, not even as a meal ticket, being too ugly, awkward, poor etc. Invisible, perpetually alone faceless worker drones in other words.
No idea what Gamma means.
Seems like Omega might also mean the rejected outsider who’s given up seeking the approval of society/women; the ‘loser’ who does their own thing, as in how MGTOWs like to see themselves.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=omega%20male
Explanations for ‘Gamma’ vary quite a bit, from clingy passive-aggressive loser, to having both Alpha and Beta traits.
Sigma is similarly vague: some sort of introspective outsider with certain Alpha qualities but an aversion to aggression. (Feel free to laugh now.)
occasional reader: Hi-5 for Fallout references! Rad-Away and Rad-X are essential to wandering around in the wasteland. 🙂 Not sure how that fits with radfems, but it’s interesting to think about.
Bryce: If that’s true, these guys are just avoiding admitting they’re Omegas per your first definition, then?
> Scildfreja
I do not know if it is meaningful, but if there is a difference between Alpha and Sigma, it must be Delta. Often a difference, a Delta. Sometimes also a river fork till a big pond, but still. So you may write Alpha = Delta Sigma. The reverse is still possible : Sigma = Delta Alpha.
Is is clearer now ?
@Chiomara
@DaliLlama
DL’s definition of radical feminism is the one I’m familiar (and identify) with too. I’ve certainly heard people express TERF-like ideas, but I’d been thinking of them as essentialist (albeit within the broad wing of rad fem).
Isn’t this a lovely website, where we can talk about these issues without screaming at each other?
@occasional reader
So α = Δσ or σ = Δα
Makes more sense than their wolf-society model based on outdated understandings of how wolf pack members interact.
Well, yes, but Δ→0 ? Or, ΣΔ ∀(α=Δσ | α>0)? Or is this non-boolean?
(Sorry, i do not have access to the greek characters here).
Well, actually Delta tends to Rhô Pi, making it non-boolean. Rhô Pi is a constant proper to the manosphere, which has the particularity, as a constant, to be constant at an instant Tau, but to be different at Tau + 1, meaning this is the first constant inconstant.
So, to know itself, Sigma has to wait to know what is Delta and what is Alpha. It must know Delta before Alpha, though. Once it knows Delta, Sigma can expect Alpha, like Juliet expecting Romeo at her balcony. Thus, Delta Sigma Juliet = Alpha Romeo.
QED
I would be wary of proposing that a social constructivist understanding of gender is opposed to trans rights, in particular since the idea of a gender binary based in some form of biological essentialism often denies non-binary and agender identities.
TERFism is basically a misunderstanding of social construction theories of gender and an embrace of a fake materialism based in the idea that sex is biological (which is somehow seen as “truer” than the social) rather than itself being a construct.
Many within the materialist/dialectical tradition, particularly anarchist branches of such, have no such issue with understanding non-binary, agender or transgender folks within the context of a social constructivist view of gender. TERFs assume that gender socialization is some sort of process that takes place in vacuums for two categories of babies born with different genitals. When in fact we are all socialized 24/7 into an understanding of genders and their roles together as a society, not separately. And is it so complicated to say that if society defines a gender class that is typically assigned to provide cheap/free domestic and sexual labor to a different gender class, it is possible that the ideological conception of that gender as, say: caring, loving, self-effacing, etc… might resonate with some folks who were born with a penis, and that they may therefore be socialized as women even as the whole of cisheteronormative society tries to (violently) refuse them the right to that identity?
If we are materialists, we can actually look at empirical evidence rather than ideological spooks, and see that trans women are typically overrepresented in the same fields of work as women, they tend to also suffer sexual violence at a rate that is in line with women (worse because of intersectional oppressions based on cis supremacy) rather than men, and so forth. This should tell us how society treats them as women, and a particularly marginalized group of women at that.
@Ouraboros13:
Our emotionally stunted friends at KiA do often refer to “SJWs” as cultural Marxists. You should have seen the fit they threw when Wikipedia moved the article on cultural Marxism to a subheading under The Frankfurt School as a conspiracy. Their cries of “sensor ship!” were loud and shrill.
They will also tell you that the definition of “SJW” is intersectional feminism.