This gif makes a lot more sense if you’ve seen Galaxy Quest
#GamerGate and Men’s Rights: two terrible tastes that taste terribler together.
Ok, maybe that slogan needs a bit of work. But it’s true that when you combine the poor-oppressed-me-we-hate-AnitaZoe-Sarquinneesian narrative of the #GamerGaters with the poor-oppressed-me-feminazis-rule-the-world narrative of the Men’s Righsters you get some amazing outbursts of indignant self-dramatizing self-pity.
Take, for example, this melodramatic email sent by A Voice for Men’s “operations manager” Dean Esmay to … a grocery chain that advertises on the game site Kotaku, a bete noire of the #GamerGate movement. I’ve highlighted some of the Esmay-ist bits:
Feminists made me a misogynist: from Masculinist India
Congratulations, A Voice for Men. You are having an impact upon the world.
Or at least upon one organization in India, a truly reprehensible group called Masculinist India, which has adopted the histrionic rhetorical style, and even some of the specific arguments, advanced by AVFM and other North American Men’s Rights groups for a series of graphically challenged “masculinist” memes posted on Facebook and on the group’s web page. Masculinist India has even adopted AVFM’s preferred nomenclature, describing its members as “Men’s Human Rights Activists.” They are of course the complete opposite of “human rights” activists, campaigning instead against basic rights for women.
The influence of AVFM and other Western Men’s Rightsers can been seen again and again in Masculinist India’s posts and memes, which have all the sophistication and subtlety of Chick Tracts.
The “feminists made me a misogynist” logic of the meme above, for example, echoes the argument made in “Hate Bounces,” an influential MRA screed by MRA/MGTOW elder “Zed,” and by countless other MRAs including former AVFM Number Two John Hembling.
Other memes borrow not only the arguments of Western MRAs but recycle the same tired stock photos, like the angry woman in this meme, a favorite amongst Western MRAs.
So here’s a new perspective on the whole “should we allow women to take over the tech industry or any other industry” question, courtesy of the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog. Yes, women, if you want to run a business or an industry you apparently have to check with the dudes at the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog first.
In a post titled “Why We Don’t Want Women Taking Over Tech Or Any Other Industry,” the ironically named “Reality forever” explains that women shouldn’t be allowed to run anything because, well, women are terrible and apparently love making everyone go to meetings:
A little realization hit me while I was watching videos about #GamerGate recently. MRAs and #GamerGaters really seem to enjoy depicting themselves as cartoon villains. Above, the skull-in-a-Koolaid-pitcher mascot of MRA videoblogger Bane666au.
Below, a screencap from a video by Mundane Matt, one of the movers and shakers behind the whole #GamerGate thing.
I found this “meme” on the A Voice for Men Forums, and it was too special not to share.
The AVFM “Graphics and Art” forum is kind of a gold mine for baffling and terrible “memes,” terribly drawn comics, and “graphics” that aren’t really graphics at all — like, for example, these graphicallychallenged entries:
A couple of years back. with the help of the commentariat here, I put together an MRA Bingo Card Generator. I’ve been meaning to do a new and improved version of this for a while — as well as a companion PUA/Red Pill Bingo Card Generator, and possibly even a couple of others (Derailing Bingo? Dark Enlightenment Bingo? GamerGate Bingo?).
I know some of you all have been playing Troll Bingo in the comments. So let me know which of these card generators sound like the most amusing to you. And then let’s brainstorm about what to put in the list for each!
Also, if you can come up a way to actually play MRA Bingo, let me know. Certainly in every big thread with trolls in it, commenters could print out cards for themselves and see how many squares they can fill. Or we could set a specific time, and one of us, acting as Bingo Boss, could send you all to a particular MRA post or discussion thread elsewhere and you all could compete to see who could get a bingo first.
When I saw this quote from our old friend, A Voice For Men’s repeatedly-banned-from-Twitter Social Media Director Janet Bloomfield, it seemed to me to be so extravagantly confused that even the most confused cat against feminism would be embarrassed to have said it. So I made a new meme for it. Ta da!
Here’s the whole paragraph the quote comes from:
I am often accused of simply not understanding what feminism IS when I dare to criticize it, especially on Twitter. Get a dictionary, blah blah blah whatever. See, here’s the thing: I know exactly what feminism IS and the claim that feminists stand for gender equality is not only outright laughable, I’m beginning to see it as a calculated, deliberate, malicious lie. Feminists damn well know they are seeking superiority and the wholesale destruction of society as we know it to be replaced by a brutal matriarchy in which all women and the remaining men will be subject to totalitarian controls that would make Stalin green with envy.
Not all the remaining men! I have been assured I will be guaranteed a spot in Women’s Country with the other male servitors.
Anyhoo, if anyone else feels inspired to do any meme-ing, there are certainly any number of quotes about feminism from MRAs that might work well for similar graphics. No need to stick with cats. There are any number of animals that might better symbolize confused MRAs, from dung beetles to snakefish to bat guano. Ok, that last one isn’t strictly speaking an animal, but you get the idea.
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
If you hope to make it through the day without losing all hope in humanity, you may not wish to read the following thoughts on Ray and Janay Rice from our old friend from The Spearhead, W.F. Price.
I know people instinctively and reflexively sympathize with the victim of a brutal attack, but …
Yeah, I’m giving you all one more chance to back out of this right now, because we all know that nothing good is going to come after that “but.”
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
A couple of days ago, embattled indie game designer Zoe Quinn embarrassed some of her biggest critics by posting screenshots she’d collected from a 4channer IRC channel, showing an assortment of hateful and duplicitous #GamerGaters literally conspiring to wreck her reputation and create the illusion of a vast grassroots uprising against alleged corruption in the gaming business.
Her critics, put on the defensive, tried their best to dismiss her screenshots as “cherry picked,” and a few even accused her of writing the very messages she screenshotted and posted. Oh, there might be a few bad apples in the bunch, some were willing to concede, but they were in the minority.
And then they pulled out what they thought was their trump card: the full chat log from the IRC channel #burgersandfries from when the Zoe Quinn “scandal” first erupted in mid-August up until September 6th. All anyone had to do, they suggested, was to read the log, and they would soon see that Quinn was presenting a distorted picture based on out-of-context, “cherry-picked” quotes.
Of course, reading this particular log is a bit easier said than done: it’s 3756 pages, in 10-point type, of chaotic overlapping IRC conversations.
This is a classic case of what’s come to be known as “doc dumping,” which Wikipedia helpfully defines as
In the future, young men will be forced to play all video games as Fat Lara Croft.
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
Of all the loopy manifestos that this whole #GamerGate fiasco has inspired, I think this loopy manifesto, posted several days ago to the Men’s Rights subreddit to a smattering of upvotes, is probably my favorite.
Take it away, trudatness:
Think about what really went down in gaming journalism – not on the micro level, but on the macro level.
The most left-wing journalism companies happily filled the gaming journalism void. Think about it…
The most virulent lavender menace feminist laced industry on the planet began covering an industry whose target audience was comprised of somewhat socially awkward young men.
Hey what could go wrong?
Answer: Everything.
Woah, hate to be a stickler for stuff that actually makes sense, but if you’re going to use a homophobic slur to describe your opponents, make sure you pick the correct homophobic slur. The phrase “lavender menace” originated as an insult aimed at lesbians in the feminist movement; the term was later reclaimed by lesbian feminists. Whether as as a slur or as an honorific, I’m pretty sure the term is not a terribly apt description of the dude-dominated world of video game journalism, as dudes cannot actually be lesbians.
