We Hunted The Mammoth
By David Futrelle
People often ask “who funds The Federalist,” assuming that the answer is some shadowy right-wing billionaire who finds the site’s crackpot conservatism congenial. But I think I’ve found the actual answer: it’s the coronavirus. Yes, that’s right: the coronavirus is funding The Federalist.
So here in Illinois, the shelter-in-place order kicked in yesterday, and I’m sheltering the fuck in place. How are you all doing in The Time of Social Distancing? Are you officially or unofficially on lockdown? What are you doing to keep anxieties at bay?
By David Futrelle
The folks at the Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men like to make up their own rules about rape. The founder of the formerly-sort-of-influential site, one Paul Elam, once famously announced that he was so mad about the way rape trials are conducted that if he were to serve on a jury in such a trial he “vow[ed] publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”
By David Futrelle
So I’ve done it: I’ve found the weirdest and most delusional take on the Coronavirus yet, and it comes not from the incels or the MGTOWs or the Trump administration but rather from the “Gender Critical” subreddit, the main hangout of Reddit’s TERFs.
By David Futrelle
Noted racist, er, “intellectual” Steve Sailer has an interesting proposal that he thinks could speed up research on the coronavirus: we should exempt male researchers in the field from accusations of sexual harassment and assault until the virus is finally defeated.
By David Futrelle
Men’s Rights activists like to pat themselves, and their fellow men, on the back for doing the hard work that keeps civilization going. It’s overwhelmingly men, they point out, who mine the coal, who cut down the trees, who build the houses, who put out these houses when they catch on fire, and who do any number of other Really Manly Man things that the world needs, or thinks it needs, done. (I’m pretty sure that we could do without the coal.)
By David Futrelle
We like to think we can defeat almost any national trauma by remembering to “Keep Calm and Carry On,” as the popular poster declares.
By David Futrelle
Social Distancing, however necessary in the fight against the coronavirus, is going to be hard for most of us.
Hope you’re all safe; hope you’re all washing your hands; hope you’re all hunkering down. Our federal government (here in the US at least) has failed in pretty much every way it’s possible to fail and to a large extent we have to rely on our state and local governments — and each other.
By David Futrelle
“Here Comes My Baby,” is a deceptively cheerful-sounding song of unrequited love, written by Cat Stevens when he was a teenager. And it has the stink of high school heartbreak all over it. It occurs to me that it might be the ultimate incel anthem.