Author Archives: David Futrelle
Man Boobz Contest: Find the Whiniest, Most Entitled Response to Anita Sarkeesian
From “Damsel in Distress: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games.”
So Anita Sarkeesian, who apparently didn’t run off with all her Kickstarter money to found a Misandist Gynarchy in the wilds of Canada, has released the first video in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games project. (I’ve embedded it below.)
Naturally, this is causing great consternation in certain corners of the Internet (*cough* Reddit *cough cough* everywhere else that misogynistic nerds congregate *cough*). In the Man Boobz forum, Katz has started a contest to see who can find “the whiniest, brattiest, most entitled response” to Sarkeesian’s video on the Internet. So far Katz and Myoo have found a couple classic comments from irate Sarkeeianaphobes:
[H]ow does one go about stating that genders and gender roles are social constructs? I mean is evolution nothing to her? Does the patriarchy make male peacocks dress provocatively?
Yes. Yes it does.
And:
I’m gradually losing respect for the opposite sex. I’ve unfollowed people on tumblr who talk about how great she is, because it actually causes bile to rise in to my throat.
Yeah, that’s a totally reasonable response to a woman making a video about video games.
So anyway, I’m thinking we should bring the contest over here.
See what you can find! Consider it a sort of scavenger hunt.
Here’s my contribution, from the Men’s Rights subreddit, complaining that Damsels in Distress are the truly privileged ones:
Amazingly, this acutally got called out on r/mr as being pretty damn stupid.
Also, I have another question, to add to the stack of other questions I’ve been asking lately: Just why do you think so many guys get so angry when girls and women invade what they consider a male sphere, like gaming? (Also, why do they consider gaming to belong to boys and men?)
Oh, and here’s the video that’s causing all this hubbub:
Zerlina Maxwell challenges rape culture on Fox News, receives rape threats on Twitter.
I’m still officially on my Man Boobz staycation, but I felt I needed to mention yet another example of a woman saying that men can stop rape … and getting rape threats in return.
Political analyst Zerlina Maxwell went on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News earlier this week and made the terrible mistake of suggesting to a hostile audience that men aren’t really doing any favors to women by telling them to arm themselves against rapists. Instead, as Salon notes, she said this:
“I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there.” She told Hannity, “You’re talking about this as if it’s some faceless, nameless criminal, when a lot of times it’s someone you know and trust,” adding, “If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape.”
Indeed, increased rape awareness has contributed to a dramatic decrease in rape over the last thirty years.
But apparently a lot of men were shocked – shocked! – that a woman would suggest that their patronizing advice was less likely to prevent rape than rape prevention education aimed at the demographic group that is responsible for the overwhelmng majority of rapes. That is, men.
So, naturally, the angriest of these men decided they would show Maxwell just how wrong she was … by threatening her with rape on Twitter.
Here’s just one example:
Rape culture in action.
Maxwell’s supporters have stepped up to defend her and her remarks, and have started a hashtag — #TYZerlina — to continue the discussion. If you’re on Twitter, join in .
Here’s the Fox News segment in question featuring Maxwell:
Another question: Are MRAs inherently misogynistic?
I found this hilarious faux-MRA rant on the Tweeter. I don’t know where exactly it’s from, but kudos to lordsteve, whoever he is.
My question today: Are MRAs inherently misogynistic?
I mean, obviously the people I write about regularly here are, but are there a significant number of MRAs out there who are actually well-meaning souls who’ve been taken in by MRA talking points? Or do you have to be a bit misogynistic to begin with in order to be swayed by MRA-logic?
A Gif, and Another Question: Where do you run across MRA/PUAs/etc online?
Here’s a cool, if momentarily puzzling, gif.
And another question for you all. Well, several related questions, really.
Where did you first run across MRAs and/or PUAs etc online (or offline)? What was your reaction at the time?
Flash forward to now: Where do you tend to run across MRAs/PUAs/etc or their ideas online (expressed by people who may or may not be MRAs/PUAs/etc)?
Oh, and by the way, feel free to discuss whatever else you want, or to post links to misogyny, and generally behave as if this is an open thread, because it is.
A kitten, and a question: Are MRAs right about anything?
My Man Boobz staycation continues. Here as promised is an interesting video.
I’d also like to take the opportunity, while I’m off, to as you all, dear Man Boobz readers, some questions that I’m really interested in seeing your answers to.
The first one: Are MRAs right about anything?
My answer to that is “no,” but there are some issues they bring up that a real, non-misogynistic men’s movement could focus on. These are:
1) Prison rape. A troubling new survey suggests that it’s far more common than previously thought, and that the number of people raped inside prison (overwhelmingly male) is by some estimates nearly as great as the number of people raped outside of prison (overwhelmingly female). (Trying to break down the numbers to make clean comparisons between prison rape and rape outside of prison is difficult; Stephanie Zvan digs into the numbers here.) Of course, MRAs don’t seem to want to do anything about the problem except use the issue of male rape to attack feminists. And of course if they focused on prison rape they would have to acknowledge that female prisoners are also raped, and that LGBT folks are much, much more likely to be raped than straight cis men.
2) Disparities in prison sentences between men and women. Even after controlling for assorted relevant variables, men tend to get longer prison sentences than women for the same crimes. (I don’t have a citation handy, alas.) This is not driven by feminism; female judges tend to be harsher on women than male judges. And of course there are gigantic racial disparities in sentences as well. MRAs again have done nothing about this except use it as an excuse to circle-jerk about evil women getting a “pussy pass.”
3) Domestic violence against men should be taken more seriously. Needless to say, though, most of what MRAs say about this issue is repugnant nonsense, and they have done nothing to actually help men, instead trying to get resources taken away from women.
Thoughts, on these or on any other issues MRA might be kind of, sort of “right” about?
I’m taking a break. So here’s a fantastic Bollywood dance number.
Hey, everyone. So I sat down to write something about this horrific discussion of domestic violence on The Spearhead – which some of the Man Boobz commentariat have already started discussing here – and, well, I just couldn’t do it.
I need to step back a bit from this blog for a little while to clear my head and maintain my sanity. So I’m going to take a bit of a break – maybe just a few days, maybe a week – and post nothing but interesting videos and other things having nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny or the manosphere. You all, of course, can treat this any any other thread as a totally open thread to discuss whatever you want, including the regular Man Boobz topics of misogyny and general MRA shitlordery.
I’m going to start off with the dance number that first got me hooked on Bollywood music some years ago. This is from the 1998 film Dil Se, a drama about love and terrorism. But in Bollywood, even serious dramas have dance numbers, and Dil Se’s dance numbers are gorgeous and a little surreal.
The music from the film is by A.R. Rahman, a prolific and popular Bollywood music director best known in the US for doing the music for Slumdog Millionaire.
And yes, that is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan dancing on top of a moving train without any safety harness or stunt double or CGI trickery. (Well, there are a couple of brief bits where a double might have been used.) Enjoy!
Men’s Rights Redditor: “If women want equal rights, they need to learn how to take a punch.”
I spend more time on YouTube than I probably should. Most of the time I’m on the site, I’m tracking down strange and awesome music videos. But I also love cat videos (big surprise), ridiculous fake alien and UFO videos, videos of people behaving in incredibly unwise ways that are somehow not lethal to them, and pretty much anything that’s got Yackety Sax as its soundtrack.
What do MRAs enjoy watching? As far as I can tell, when they’re not watching videos of other MRAs, or flooding the comments of feminist videos, they like watching videos of women getting punched.
Getting their PUAHate on
Early PUAs hold a “boot camp” on a beach.
PUAHAte.com is an … interesting place. A site for debunking the ridiculous claims and shitty behavior of Pickup Artists? Sounds great – at least until you realize that the denizens are mostly dudes who hate PUAs for all the wrong reasons. That is, they hate PUAs not so much for being manipulative scumbags but for being ineffective manipulative scumbags — whose alleged magic formulas for bedding the hot babes don’t really work.
The other day I was introduced to a fledgling Twitter account, @puahate_txt, which reposts hilariously awful comments from PUAhate.com. This inspired me to take another look at the site and do a little poking around for awful quotes on my own. They weren’t hard to find. (It’s harder, really, to find comments that aren’t awful.)
Here’s one charming fellow, who calls himself ToadLookingMaggot, and who holds a grudge against the entire female gender because of a $3 loan gone awry.
After reading ” The manipulated man ” i saw women really for what they where, little selfish Moneysucking vampire Whores.
This rinsing stuff starts in high school if not earlier they try to leech money, food, free rides and basically anything that benefits them in some kind of form. I borrowed a female 3 dollars for meal a meal one time, for months she said that she was going to let me have it and in the end i never got them back.
It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 dollars or 2.000 dollars there freaks never pay you back. Only idiots buy drinks for women.
Men are ruining women because they let them get away with anything. Never in my life will i ever spend money on women unless we pay 50\50 on a date.
Uh, obvious question here, but if you hate women, and think that they’re all “Moneysucking vampire Whores,” WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DATE THEM? I’m pretty sure that you’re not going to find many interested in you either, at least not after they get a whiff of your personality.
And that’s your PERSONALITY, not your looks. PUAhaters seem obsessed with the notion that women only date male models, and spend a lot of time bemoaning their own looks – I just quoted a guy who describes himself as a ToadLookingMaggot, after all. Yet whenever they post pictures of themselves they seem to be completely normal, average, not-actually-bad-looking-at-all guys. Guys, your problem isn’t your lack of beauty on the outside. What’s ugly is your attitudes.
Speaking of which, here’s RomanCitizen, a self-described Incel, lamenting that life is sad to all but the “top 10%” of men? Why? Because ladies walk around looking all pretty, yet for some reason they do not allow RomanCitizen to fuck them.
The life of man is a sad one
Excluding the top 10%.
Born into a world of plenty, of abundance, of denial.
See, smell, imagine.
Do not taste, touch, feel.
Like a caged animal in a harem, fed only occasionally fish heads (scraps in the game).
And when the caged animal gets the fish head (scrap), he is happy and rationalizes his pitiful existence, like many men …
But, the cage is still a cage. A fish head – still a fish head.
PROTIP: If you think of the women you don’t find sufficiently desirable as “fish heads,” and walk around in a perpetual boner-rage, you’re probably not going to seem especially charming to the women you do find desirable. Or to anyone else except perhaps the denizens of PUAHate.com. And not all of them, either.
How not to impress the ladies on OkCupid
So @catches_stars on Twitter is pretty hilarious. She’s also got an OkCupid account, and regularly posts snippets of her conversations with some of the more problematic dudes who contact her, some on her main Twitter account and some on @okcupid_TXT. With her permission, and because I’m too lazy to actually write a post today, I’m passing along a few of my favorites.
This overeager fellow has a rather sudden change of heart when his stated plan runs into an obstacle, that obstacle being that @catches_stars finds him completely repulsive.
MRAs on love and marriage: “There is nothing wrong with wanting something beautiful that puts out.”
Vampire brides will steal your lifeblood
In not-quite spring, a young MRA’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, and how women are all a bunch of moneygrubbing whores that get uglier and uglier as they get older.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, discussions of marriage are busting out all over, like the buds of new spring flowers or the skidmarks in an MRA’s underpants. The fellows are not too keen on this whole marriage thing, which is an obvious female trick to rob men of their money and sperm and tie them to rapidly depreciating assets (women) who are only going to get uglier as time goes by.
In one thread, a fellow named wrez shares these thoughts, to much acclaim (or at least a few dozen upvotes):
In another, a fellow named rathum2323 suggests that any women interested in marriage is clearly up to something nefarious.
All that said, I am pleased that Reddit MRAs are managing to convince their friends not to marry. Because if you’re someone who turns to MRAs for marriage advice, it’s probably best for all concerned that you never marry anyone or anything.
