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Category Archives: reddit

The Thinking Housewife: Olympic women athletes too athletic

Sure, America’s women athletes may have taken home a whopping 29 gold medals, but over on The Thinking Housewife, Laura Wood is pissed off at them – and the rest of the Olympic women — for being so, well, athletic.

In a recent post, Wood rushes to the defense of a Turkish newspaper columnist who complained about the “broad-shouldered, flat-chested women” who were destroying Womanhood with their mannish, muscular bodies. Alas, wrote Yuksel Aytug, even their “breasts – the symbol of womanhood, motherhood – [were] flattened into stubs as they were seen as mere hindrances to speed.” Curse you, sports bras!

Seriously, in future Olympics, female athletes should face mandatory deductions for every cup size less than C.

Wood adds her own two cents:

A man who dares to say what every normal person has been thinking when confronted with the muscle-bound female gladiators at the games and what soft, effeminate Western men would not dare articulate, Aytug has been attacked for his remarks throughout the Western world. He is tiresomely accused of misogyny. In fact, judging from these words, he is an admirer of women, a courageous defender of them.

Or at least of their tits.

The Olympic Games are anti-woman. They require female athletes to ape men in grotesque ways. They compromise female fertility and modesty. They promote the idea that aggression and competitiveness in women are normal and healthy. They debase not just women athletes but womanhood throughout the world.

Well, I suppose Wood can take solace in the fact that the “muscle-bound” bodies of these “female gladiators” didn’t stop the Pedophile – sorry, Ephebophile – Army of Reddit from perving on McKayla Maroney and the rest of the US Women’s Gymnastics team.

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Hey, MRAs: If you don’t want people to associate you with hatred, don’t associate yourself with hate groups

MRAs: digging their own hole.

Here’s a bit of advice for Men’s Rights redditors and MRAs in general: if you don’t want people to associate the Men’s Rights movement with hatred, you should probably not associate yourselves with hate groups.

Yesterday, a fellow called heiligenschein posted a link in the Men’s Rights subreddit to a relatively new subreddit called simply SPLC, a subreddit set up by enemies of the Southern Poverty Law Center and devoted to, as heiligenschein put it, “compiling the numerous criticisms of the [SPLC].” As he explained in a comment:

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Reddit Island Redux, or, The Possibly True Saga of Current Island

Dudes, try making a Lego island first, see how that goes.

You remember Reddit Island, right? The utterly serious, unintentionally hilarious project in which a bunch of Redditors attempt to set up a Reddity miniature utopia on some remote island somewhere? They are still trying to find an island, and apparently that process is … not going so swimmingly.

As Adrian Chen of Gawker notes in a nice long piece on the project, a fortysomething IT guy from Virginia names Mark Wells has been telling prospective Reddit Islanders that he may have found the perfect place for them:

Wells, who uses the handle Citizenpolitician, explained in a series of increasingly breathless posts on Reddit Island that he’d been scoping out a tiny tropical splotch called Current Island. Just off the coast of Bahamian island of Eluthera, Current is sparsely inhabited, and could be a possible option for their settlement. He’d cold-called members of the local government about the possibility of having a few hundred internet nerds settle Current Island. And he had been met with a very promising response.

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Science proves the Men’s Rights subreddit to be totally not (completely) misogynistic

So apparently I’m way off base with this “misogyny” thing. For example, I have been under the impression that I have been finding misogynistic stuff in the Men’s Rights subreddit, like, all the time. With upvotes, and everything. But evidently I’m wrong.

Because now ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit mods, has done a very scientific study that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that, well, whatever misogyny is there is officially not a big damn deal.

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Here’s the video of the Al Jazeera English show featuring Helen Lewis and Rebecca Watson, among others, and me.

It’s  pretty good show. Most of the discussion involves social media researcher and Fordham professor Alice Marwick and Helen Lewis of the New Statesman. Those of us in the Google+ Hangout pop in briefly with comments and questions.

FWIW, I appear only briefly in the show proper, but I have a somewhat longer (and a bit more coherent) comment in the ten minute “online only” portion that immediately follows the show (and which is also on this video).

It was a somewhat strange, if educational, experience, my first appearance on TV. (The next time I get webcammed into a show, I won’t reflexively look down at the laptop while talking.) It all went by really, really quickly. Weirdly frantic behind the scenes as the producer tried to slot us all in.

The comments on the video on YouTube nicely  illustrate the problem we were discussing; that is, they are a rancid pile of misogynistic shitlordery.

My favorite comment is this one from Urhoboman5 about Rebecca Watson:

At 5;30 that chick has a youtube channel. Just type in rebecca feminist and you’ll find it. Interesting how most of her videos are voted down. Sometimes as much as 80% negative because the stuff she says is pure nonsense.

That’s right. He actually thinks that the fact that her videos are targeted by downvote squads proves that she’s wrong to talk about harassment. She’s harassed by dudes who don’t like her talking about harassment so therefore it’s “nonsense” for her to talk about harassment. Brilliant.

Men’s Rights Redditors discover a new woman to hate (and it’s one of the ones I wrote about in my last post)

Reading comprehension: a bit of a problem for the angry dude crowd. So in my post earlier today I wrote about a Redditdude who got so angry reading a relatively innocuous Forbes column by a WOMAN ON TEH INTERNET that he called her a “cunt” and threatened to murder people and got more than a thousand net upvotes. All based on a complete misreading of her article, of which he obviously only skimmed the first paragraph.

Well, now the Men’s Rights subreddit has gotten hold of the Forbes column, and they too are pig-biting mad – not so much at the column itself, which it’s clear not many of them have actually read, but at a straw column they’ve written in their heads which is nothing but EEEVIL MISANDRY.

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The Internet finds yet more women to hate

Pissed off cats: Much more entertaining than pissed-off dudes on the Internet

So yesterday, I appeared (albeit very briefly) on TheStream on Al Jazeera English along with Helen Lewis of the New Statesman, social media researcher Alice Marwick, Skepchick blogger Rebecca Watson, and others. The topic: online misogyny and harassment of women. No sooner had the show ended than I ran across two perfect examples of precisely the sort of misogynistic harassment we’d  just been talking about, courtesy of Reddit and Roosh.

First, Reddit. On Monday, Forbes columnist Kashmir Hill – female, beep boop! – wrote a piece mocking the notion (apparently widespread in some circles) that in these hyper-connected days people without Facebook accounts are a bit suspect. But part way along towards making her point she committed the terrible error of making the following not-to-be-taken-literally remark:

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Men’s Rights Redditor: “I advocate the removal of judges, politicians, and other government agents who violate the Constitution by any means necessary.” [UPDATED]

Men’s Rights subreddit regular Demonspawn (remember him?) is back again with some deliberately vague but definitely threatening talk about judges and politicians:

Not a lot of “plausible deniability” here, though I am sure various MRAs will try to excuse this as not being what it obviously is: a threat of violence against judges, politicians and others who work for the government.

He’s done this before; I wrote about it here.

And while we’re on the topic of Demonspawn, here’s a little followup comment of his from the thread we discussed the other day. It’s a giant wall of text, I know, but it contains gems like: “When women mouth off to men and get their faces bashed in, they’ll know equality.” At least this comment of his got as many downvotes as upvotes.

I’m banned from the Men’s Rights subreddit, of course, but Demonspawn, despite repeatedly violating the subreddit’s rules about posting comments advocating violence, continues to post away. See his comment history for more lovely thoughts on, among other things, why women are parasites who don’t deserve the vote.

Men’s Rights Redditor on a Men’s Rights critic: “He is getting older and homosexual and … people like these tend to age like milk instead of wine.”

In yet another discussion of Arthur Goldwag’s latest post on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog (looking at MRAs bad-mouthing the men who lost their lives protecting their girlfriends in the Aurora shootings), longtime Men’s Rights Redditor Liverotto offers this intriguing take on what he sees as Goldwag’s motivations for criticizing the Men’s Rights movement:

Yeah, a dude actually wrote that, and a couple of people actually upvoted it.

I’m trying to understand the logic: Goldwag is growing older and more homosexual (do men usually become gay as they age?). But gay men age badly, which makes them mad at their “suitors.” So therefore Goldwag has come to hate the (mostly straight) men of the Men’s Rights movement?

Another highlight of the discussion: The r/mensrights regular who thinks I’m Paul Elam. No, really.

Men’s Rights Redditor: “(Most) women don’t love men.” (Also, it’s only respectful for dudes to hang onto nude pics of an ex-girlfriend.)

Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, some of the fellas are discussing a recent post from Arthur Goldwag on the Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch blog. Goldwag looks at some of the hero-bashing comments from MRAs in the wake of the Aurora shootings, which we’ve discussed here and here.

This somehow inspires the prolix Men’s Right Redditor Demonspawn to set forth some of his opinions about (most) women and how shitty they are. The whole discussion is worth reading, as a sort of case study in MRA hypocrisy: all this woman-hatred comes in a thread in which Reddit MRAs wax indignant once again that anyone might possibly label them hateful. (Also, how dare women suggest that there’s anything untoward about a dude hanging onto nude pics of an ex, when clearly not deleting them is a sign of “respect.”)

Looks like Demonspawn won himself a convert! Congrats. you beautiful douchebag.

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