Category Archives: douchebaggery
Off-topic: Kittens and/or Krautrock
Sometimes I need a brief respite from manosphere douchebaggery. Sometimes I’d rather just watch kittens and listen to Krautrock. Possibly at the same time. If anyone wants to join me, here are some kittens attacking a soda box, and a recording of Harmonia playing live in 1974.
To be honest, I don’t actually expect that anyone but me is going to enjoy the Harmonia video, which has no visuals other than the album cover and which consists of 17 minutes and 24 seconds of the fellas playing basically the same thing over and over. (Hey, I like it.) The kittens, on the other hand, are almost certainly going to be a delight for everyone.
If I could only figure out a way to get kittens to perform Krautrock, then I’d be in heaven.
The recent ugliness on Reddit
From time to time, something will happen on the Internet or in real life that I know I should write about for Man Boobz, but it’s so infuriating or depressing that I can’t bring myself to write about it. The recent bullshit on Reddit involving a young woman whose story of a sexual assault was met with angry disbelief until she provided video proof that her injuries were real is a perfect case in point.
Briefly, what happened is this:
A young woman posted about a sexual assault she’d endured a day or so earlier – a man had tried to rape her, pushing her to the ground and scraping her face on the pavement. In a separate topic she posted a picture of her injuries, most notably a giant scrape on her cheek. You can see it at right; click on the picture to see it full size.
Then another Redditor noticed that some time back, the same woman had posted a picture of herself in zombie makeup. This, he said, made him skeptical that her injuries were real — it was probably just a good makeup job.
That was all it took to send Reddit into a full internet lynch mob frenzy: obviously this woman was a liar and an attention whore and, even worse, possibly a feminist anti-rape activist! Redditors suddenly became both medical and makeup experts, and declared that the giant scrape on her face was obviously phony. (Not to me; I tried arguing with several of them to no avail.) It got ugly, very ugly, very quickly.
The woman at the heart of the storm asked if she needed to post an actual video of her cleaning the wound on her face to show that it was real; a redditor demanded that she do just that.
So she did. (Here it is.) Long story short: the scrape is real. The woman also posted a picture of the business card given to her by the police detective she’s spoken to when reporting the incident. It’s now pretty clear that there is no reason to doubt that her story is true. Even the Redditor who originally challenged her story realized that she was almost certainly telling the truth.
Here’s her post offering proof to back up her story.
At this point the lynch mob lost its steam; some people even apologized to her.
But the evidence of the ugliness remains in a host of different threads and different subforums on Reddit. I honestly don’t have the energy or the patience to sift through all of the ugliness; luckily, Jezebel has given a decent account of the whole spectacle; you can go there to get some more of the details.
You might also want to look in to the main thread where most of the ugliness occurred — though at this point many of the vile accusatory comments that got upvoted when everyone seemed to assume she was lying have been retroactively voted down. (The screenshot I posted above gives a better idea of what it looked like at the time; here’s another screenshot with some of the choicer comments.)
Naturally, Men’s Rightsers contributed to the ugliness – though most of the worst comments appeared outside of the Men’s Rights subreddit, and a surprising number of r/mr regulars refused to jump on the original “she’s a liar” bandwagon.
While many Men’s Rightsters are now apologetic, others still think she may be lying.
Here’s a good discussion of the whole thing in ShitRedditSays, and a followup.
Life Before Feminism: The future inspiration for Austin Powers records the worst song in history.
Peter Wyngarde will not make you horny, baby.
Sorry, folks, no regular post until tomorrow. But to tide you over, might I draw your attention to possibly the most offensively misogynist song in history? (Trigger Warning: I’m about to describe what is possibly the most offensively misogynist song in history.) It’s a song recorded in 1970 by British actor Peter Wyngarde – star of several 60s spy dramas and allegedly an inspiration for Austin Powers.
The music itself is not the problem – it’s peppy and punchy, and sounds like a lot of crime/spy soundtracks from the 60s and 70s. No, the problem comes from, well, it comes from Wyngarde. The star, as Bret at Egg City Radio points out,
chose not to go the easy listening/pop route, instead bizarrely delving into lurid and sometimes flat-out stupid spoken word interludes.
Not just stupid, but offensive. Really offensive. Case in point:
a little three-minute ditty entitled “Rape”, in which Wyngarde not only seems to extolling the virtues of rape, but also executes a handful of wheedling barf-bag racial stereotypes that would make even Jerry Lewis blush. It must be heard to be believed … .
Well, yes and no. The idea that back in 1970 some dude might think it hilarious to do a song that was basically one big rape joke? Not that shocking. That he might add some horrifyingly “funny” racism into the mix? Also not completely shocking. That the record is mixed in such a way that it is nearly impossible to tell what Wyngarde – an actor who presumably knows how to enunciate – is saying? Now that’s a little shocking. I would have thought the record executives behind this cash-in project would have hired a more competent producer.
You can download the whole album at Egg City Radio.
Did I mention that it’s titled “When Sex Leers its Inquisitive Head?”
EDITED TO ADD: Woah, the song is up on YouTube. I didn’t even bother to check, because I assume it violates pretty much all of YouTube’s rules, but here it is. Thanks to Donsie in the comments for the link.
Man Boobz Super Fun Time Video Party 5: A Nice Guy’s plea
Tiny Bunny and Small Dog are trying a new look this week, or however long it’s been since the last one of these. It’s a crass attempt to appeal to space aliens.
This time the horrible misogynist quote comes from an anonymous confession on the web site Group Hug , a site devoted to anonymous confessions. In it, a Nice Guy argues that dating is all about “give and take.” Thanks to Denia for posting the link in the comments!
The full quote can be found below the video. (I did some teensy edits to it in the video.)
Mr. Anonymous 174618126 says:
You want a good guy to fall in love with you. Guys want some hot tail. That’s the game. You give and take, we give and take. It’s impossible for two people to even co-exist happily without this give and take process, let alone have a good relationship. So every time you tell me “Uh? I’m more than just a piece of ass, I’m—-” I don’t even hear the rest. I’m well aware you’re not just a piece of ass, you cunt. If I thought that, I wouldn’t talk to you and try to get your consent; I’d just take you. But to give the famous line “I’m more than just a piece of ass” is pretty much the same as saying you’re not interested in even entertaining the idea of us sleeping together. And that means you’re not worth my time or any man’s time.
I’m being fair. Women like you don’t want a man, you want a slave. Someone you can command to bark, sniff, and roll over. Something you can play fetch with. It would be the same thing if I came over to your house, forced you to give me head, and left. I don’t want to be a slave and you don’t want to be my bitch. So why is it so difficult to meet me half way?
I’m so sick of this shit. So very very sick. If you’re not interested in me then don’t fucking talk to me.
Mr. Anonymous 174618126, I feel safe in saying that no one who has read what you just wrote will ever want to talk to you.
Won’t someone think of the poor rape-joke tellers?
This text-as-image comment, posted to Reddit, has 468 net upvotes the last I checked. (Here’s the original post it’s responding to.)
Truly, the most heart-wrenching thing about rape is that those courageous souls who make jokes about it are sometimes made to feel a little bad about it on the internet.
Are Nice Guys sociopaths?
Cats: The world's most adorable sociopaths
A reader alerted me to this post on a very interesting blog I haven’t written about before. Regular readers of Man Boobz may find some of these, er, arguments to be a bit familiar:
Our culture is absolutely fucked up. Girls and women hold all control of sex. … [F]rom the first interest in girls, we’re expected to pursue them, and they’re expected to reject us. …
I’m a perfectly healthy man. I’m stronger than a lot of other men, more intelligent, more competent, I think I’m reasonably good looking, and I’m very well endowed. None of that matters though. Somehow, women go for men that fail on a comparison on multiple accounts. …
There are things like rejecting a woman, or pretending to be uninterested that make her even more interested. … Women subconsciously measure a man’s performance in bed by his dancing and posturing. If only they knew how fucking stupid and wrong they are.
I don’t know what happened with me. I’ve always had a strong sex drive, but I got fucked over socially. I wasn’t even “in” in the reject crowd. All girls rejected me, and most rejects rejected me. People made fun of me, laughed at me, picked on me, and all the girls that I lusted after were either repulsed by me, or didn’t know who I was. Even the girls that were “friends” with me, wouldn’t have sex with me. Meanwhile, they went around whoring themselves out to whatever man played this fucking dumb-ass social flirting game. They [crude sexual remarks redacted ---DF] like the dirty little whores they are. I’ve been available my whole life, but the only person that ever chose me as a mate were paid prostitutes, and my wife, who is emotionally and mentally fucked up beyond comprehension.
On the surface, this reads like almost every “nice guy” lament I’ve ever seen on the internet. Oh, it’s a bit more bitter than most, but this “nice guy” hits all the right notes: like the Holocuast-trivializing “nice guy” we looked at last Sunday, he complains that women get to actually choose whom to have sex with; like the “nice guy” Redditor we looked at Monday, he still holds a grudge against former crushes who chose to go out with (and have sex with) guys who weren’t him.
The difference? For one thing, this new guy is a bit more self-aware than most “nice guys,” in that he doesn’t actually describe himself as “nice.” For another, he is (or at least claims to be) a sociopath. As might have been immediately apparent had I quoted these comments, which immediately follow what I quoted from him above:
This is the reason I don’t care about people. Why the fuck should I? Everybody [wears] a mask. I want to rape and murder people, and I pretend I’m “normal.” Normal people wear a mask where they pretend they’re friendly and honest; whereas, they’re really deceptive, insecure, and emotionally hostile.
This posting comes from Sociopathworld, a fascinating blog written by a sociopath who is basically trying to explain to non-sociopaths how people like him or her think, to clear up misconceptions about them, and to help sociopaths themselves deal better with their disorder. (The author of the blog didn’t write the comments above; they were sent in by a reader.)
For those not intimately familiar with abnormal psych, “sociopathy” (often used synonymously with the term “psychopathy”) is a term commonly used to describe what is known clinically as Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The blogger at SociopathWorld quotes a journal article that gives this useful capsule description of psychopaths as people
characterised by an absence of empathy and poor impulse control, with a total lack of conscience. … They tend to be egocentric, callous, manipulative, deceptive, superficial, irresponsible and parasitic, even predatory.
So are “nice guys” a bunch of sociopaths? Well, no. They may be egocentric – like the “nice guy” on Tumblr who compared his lack of dates to the Holocaust. They may lack empathy – like the “nice guy” Redditor who couldn’t feel sympathy for a female “friend” who had been raped. They may be manipulative – hoping that by being excessively “nice” and doing favors for women they will earn themselves some sex.
But they lack, among other things, the impulsiveness and routine deceitfulness that tend to characterize real sociopaths. Sociopaths can be deceptively charming, but very few people would ever describe them as nice. (Indeed, if anything, it’s pickup artists that act the most like real sociopaths; indeed, I’ve heard “game” described before, I think accurately, as an attempt to get guys to think and act more like charming, conscienceless sociopaths.)
So why do “nice guy” laments make them sound so much like sociopaths? I think their egocentricity and their almost total lack of empathy are key. “Nice guys” get crushes on a lot of girls and women, but these crushes often seem to have nothing to do with the objects of these intense feelings: the “nice guys” have whipped up a romantic and sexual drama in their own head, and simply projected it onto some convenient romantic object . The “nice guy” Redditor was once obsessed with his female “friend” – but when she was raped he did not react as a true friend would, with sympathy and sadness. He responded with a callous “she had it coming.”
Combine this lack of empathy with a sense of wounded entitlement – I DESERVE a cute girlfriend! – and you have a recipe for a pretty noxious stew.
“Nice guys” may not literally be sociopaths. But sometimes they think and act in some pretty sociopathic ways.
David K. Meller on women getting cancer: “HA HA HA HA HA…LOL!”
Not reallly the appropriate response to someone else getting cancer.
Those of you who aren’t regular readers of the comments here may not appreciate the true genius of David K. Meller, an excitable and exclamation-point-loving MRA I’ve mentioned once or twice in my posts, but who shows up in the comments here with some regularity – ending each comment with his trademark “PEACE AND FREEDOM!!”
Mr. Meller is a great lover (not physically) of men:
Men, by and large, are a wonderful sex! We are more intelligent than women, more creative, at least in the areas outside the home. We are, also, as a rule, physically stronger as well …
He claims to love women, too – though not feminists, whom he seems to consider something other than human:
Women ARE people, and often wonderful people at that! Feminists, on the other hand, AREN’T! …
Women are people, and properly raised, educated, and loved,, are beautiful, charming, and lovely!
Despite his alleged love of women – at least the non-feminist ones – he often says utterly horrible things about them. The examples are too numerous to catalogue. But let me draw your attention to one rather telling comment of his I found recently on The Spearhead.
In the midst of a discussion of Sharon Osbourne’s now notorious comments about a woman who cut off her husband’s penis, Meller offered the following musings on the subject of women and cancer. I am having trouble finding much love of women in them:
It is .. possible that the breast cancers (not to mention ovarian and vaginal cancers) have a psychosomatic aspect to their development. … The feelings of vicious sadism, brutality, and callous indifference to another’s pain in such harpies must inexorably work on the molecular, genetic, and cellular level to generate consequences! I hope that you girls find these consequences as hilarious as I do when you annoy me with your next women’s health campaign against cancer!
Maybe women don’t strictly speaking, DESERVE cancer, but it will be hard for me to stop laughing at them …
Isn’t the thought of cancer-ridden women going under the knife amusing? Isn’t thought of women losing part, or all, of a sexual organ that is precious to them FUNNY? The pain women experience when recovering from surgery (and radiation or chemo, which is almost as bad) is still less than the agony which that poor man underwent when he underwent castration at the hands of a deranged, sadistic, and vicious she-weasel (my apologies to weasels)!
[F]or every man who is abused and tortured by his woman, it almost warms my heart that the same hatred and spite characteristic of the female human(?) sets THEM up for a similar fate down the road, as that bitterness, vicious sadism, and bloodthirstiness so characteristic of those who would LAUGH AT the suffering caused by a “woman” committing such a vicious crime predisposes them toward cancer, and (I hope) a similar fate!
Karma is always there, girls, and it is a bitch!! HA HA HA HA HA…LOL!
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
David K. Meller
That “PEACE AND FREEDOM!!!” always gets me.
This being The Spearhead, Meller’s comments garnered more than a few upvotes. Not as many as he usually gets, admittedly, but some.
At some point I will do a Best of David K. Meller post, highlighting some of his “best” comments here. He is one for the ages.
Science Corner: Why some self-obsessed douchebags hate the ladies so much
I'd do me. Why won't those bitches?
Well, this explains a few things:
Narcissistic Heterosexual Men Target Their Hostility Primarily at Heterosexual Women, the Objects of Their Desires, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2010) — Heterosexual women bear the brunt of narcissistic heterosexual men’s hostility, while heterosexual men, gay men and lesbian women provoke a softer reaction, according to psychologist Dr. Scott Keiller from Kent State University at Tuscarawas. This is likely to be due to women’s unparalleled potential for gratifying, or frustrating, men’s narcissism, the author concludes. They are crucial players and even gatekeepers in men’s quests for sexual pleasure, patriarchal power and status.
More here. The actual study here (subscribers only).
Yes, like a lot of psych studies, it was based on a relatively small sample of college students (104 undergraduate men, to be exact). But after this post yesterday – and, you know, the entire content of this blog — it’s hard not to think that Keiller is on to something.
Breaking News: Men’s Rights mod on Reddit is kind of a dick
So, funny story.
Earlier today, some guy on the Men’s Rights subreddit made a not-so-vaguely threatening remark about me. I sent the mod a message about it, and, well, this was his response:
Yeah. Pretty sure that’s not exactly the way Reddit wants its mods to behave.
Manosphere blogs: Hey, that Breivik guy has some good ideas!
The "thoughtful" Breivik in custody
Earlier today I wrote about some Men’s Rights Redditors who endorsed the views of Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik – without knowing that the views they were endorsing were his. But others in the manosphere have stepped up to defend Breivik’s manifesto (if not his actions) plainly and explicitly, in full knowledge of just whose ideas they are endorsing.
On In Mala Fide, blogger Ferdinand Bardamu praises Breivik’s “lucidity,” and blames his murderous actions on the evils of a too-liberal society:
[A]nother madman with a sensible manifesto. Another completely rational, intelligent man driven to murderous insanity. And once again, society has zero introspection in regards to its profound ability to turn thoughtful men into lunatic butchers. …
He’s not being sarcastic here. He continues:
That makes HOW many rage killers in the past five years alone? And not just transparent headcases like Jared Loughner or George Sodini, but ordinary men like Pekka-Eric Auvinen or Joe Stack who simply weren’t going to take it anymore. No one bothers to ask WHY all these men suddenly decide to pick up a gun and start shooting people – they’re all written off as crazies. Or the rage killings are blamed on overly permissive gun laws …
Here’s an idea – sick societies produce sick individuals who do sick things. Anders Breivin [sic] murdered nearly a hundred teens (not children, TEENS – they were at a summer camp for young adults) and must pay the price, but the blood of those teens is ultimately on the hands of the society that spat him forth. He is the bastard son of a masochistic, degenerate, rootless world that pisses on its traditions and heritage to elevate perversity, mindless consumerism and ethnic self-hatred to the highest of virtues.
(Bolded text in original.) That final reference to “ethnic self-hatred” seems to be Bardamu’s euphemistic way of complaining that not enough white people are white supremacists.
Then he adds this repulsive final thought on Breivik’s victims:
[S]top acting so fucking shocked that Breivin murdered “children.” As William Rome pointed out, it’s been de rigeur for all of human history for political revolutionaries to kill the heirs of their enemies alongside the enemies themselves, to ensure that the old system would stay dead and buried. … That doesn’t make what he did excusable, but it does make it understandable.
Meanwhile, Chuck of Gucci Little Piggy offers what appears to be a somewhat more restrained, if ultimately more puzzling, defense of Breivik’s manifesto – or at least that portion of the manifesto that Breivik borrowed from the writings of far-right blogger Fjordman.
Chuck complains that Hugo Schwyzer and I are “try[ing] to blame Breivik on MRAs” in our recent posts showing the similarities between Breivik’s ideas and those of many MRAs. Never mind that neither Hugo nor I referred to Breivik as an MRA. I described him as an antifeminist, which is an undeniable fact, whose views are “strikingly similar to many MRAs.” (Emphasis added.) Hugo stated explicitly that he didn’t blame the MRM directly for Breivik’s actions, noting that “[m]ost MRAs – perhaps almost all – reject violence and mass murder as a political tactic.”
Evidently Chuck feels that to even mention the MRM in conjunction with Breivik is some sort of egregious smear, especially since the shooter spent “only” 23 pages of his manifesto writing explicitly about feminism.
Weirdly, after trying to draw a sharp line between Breivik and the MRM, Chuck goes on to apparently endorse Breivik’s (and Fjordman’s) notions about the ways in which feminism “greased the wheels to allow Islam into his country.” The rest of Chuck’s post elaborates on, and seems to fully endorse, Breivik’s/Fjordman’s argument that feminism’s “emasculation of Western men has taken the organic policing mechanism out of the hands of men in society” and thus rendered Western society helpless before the Islamic cultural invaders.
I’ve asked Chuck to clarify if this is indeed what he means to convey in his post. If so, I can only say: If you’re trying to draw a distinction between your ideas and the ideas of a murderous terrorist, you don’t really advance your case by agreeing with the central thrust of these ideas pretty much wholeheartedly.
