Blog Archives
The Stuff I Ban: Chris Key of Men’s Rights Online complains about “feminazi dykes and c***ts” using foul language.
Chris, enough! I’m trying to sleep here.
Here at Man Boobz, I’ve set it so first-time commenters have their comments sent to moderation so I can decide if they’re sort of people I want to have commenting here on a regular basis. Given the obnoxiousness of some of the people I let through, I imagine some of you might wonder just what it takes to get censored around here. So here, as a public service of sorts, is one recent comment from a first-timer that I didn’t let through.
The Men’s Rights Movement: Much Less Popular Than Horse Porn
When you spend as much time as we do here at Man Boobz scrutinizing the Men’s Rights movement, it’s easy to forget what a fringe phenomenon it is. So here are some charts from Google Trends – charting the frequency of certain search terms from 2004 until today — that help to put it all in perspective. (Thanks to Katz, Cloudiah and Cthulhu’s Intern in the comments for inspiring this post.)
That “rapidly growing” Men’s Rights movement that MRAs like to talk about? It may actually be stagnant or even shrinking, if searches for “men’s rights” are any indication. Despite a recent comeback, they’re still less than half of what they were at their height in 2004.
Now let’s put that in perspective.
No, there’s nothing wrong with that graph; it’s just that My Little Pony is so much more popular than Men’s Rights that the latter simply vanishes into the X axis.
But this graph is my favorite:
Well, nothing will top that, but here’s a graph showing that people are a lot more concerned about misogyny than misandry — and, I would add, for good reason.
Let’s see what other trends we can find!
(Oh, and sorry about the low quality pics; WordPress won’t let me embed the charts.)
Hey, It’s Some Men Against Assholes and Misogyny!
Jen Kirkman (Men Against Assholes and Misogyny Not Pictured)
With all the assholery that I’ve been writing about lately, I wanted to highlight something that wasn’t assholish. That is, in fact, anti-assholish. And that’s comedian Jen Kirkman’s new tumblr blog: “MA’AM” – MEN AGAINST ASSHOLES & MISOGYNY, which she describes as “a place for men – not afraid to call themselves feminists – to write from their heart to help educate men who may still hold some sexist attitudes towards women.”
Kirkman started it a bit over a week ago after going on a sort of Twitter strike, frustrated by all the misogynistic assholes that kept popping up on her timeline.
Here’s how she explains it:
Sometimes I would get sad when I was batting away dozens of hate-filled things while in my timeline my male comedian friends were just joking along having fun – as we all should be. And I felt like I was alone on the playground and I wanted them to speak up for me. Not “beat up” the specific people attacking me … but I wanted my male comedian friends to write, in public, about things they have expressed to me in private about how much they feel for the women in their life who are still spoken to this way.
So far she’s gotten a lot of followers — she picked up a thousand in the first 48 hours — and a ton of submissions, some from fellow comedians (Greg Proops, Michael Ian Black), some from regular dudes, one from her dad.
The submissions are, I suppose I should say, a mixed bag. Some of the essays are great. Some are a bit mansplainy, or White Knighty, or otherwise a bit problematic.
But that’s kind of inherent to the project. Jen is challenging guys who don’t spend all day every day thinking about feminism, but whose hearts are basically in the right place, to stand up against the asshole misogynists of the world. And a lot of guys are responding to her challenge.
Oh, BTW, while we’re on the topic: Jen is also pretty fucking hilarious.
Here’s some of her standup:
And here she is narrating some Drunk History. (She really was drunk.)
MRA Paul Elam Launches a Hate Campaign Against a College Student for Attending a Demonstration and Making Twitter Jokes
Paul Elam, Poster Boy for a Hate Campaign
Paul Elam is a 55-year-old man who once told a feminist foe that “the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” Today he’s launched a campaign of defamation against a college student that’s clearly intended to intimidate her and other feminists into silence. The alleged crimes of this woman, whom Elam identifies by name? Possibly attending a demonstration against MRA author Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto, possibly tearing down posters for the event, and making a couple of jokes on Twitter. Oh, and she also once suggested that Farrell was a misogynist.
Elam has not yet revealed what effect this new campaign has had upon his penis.
While her (apparent) attendance at the anti-Farrell demonstration is what brought the young woman to Elam’s attention, he seems particularly puzzled and enraged by two jokey comments she made on Twitter. In one of them, she joked that her “political position” was “kill all men hail satan.” In the other, she said she was thinking about getting knuckle tattoos that spell out “misandry.”
These jokey comments have evidently convinced Elam that
She doesn’t just hate men; doesn’t just want them dead or silenced or marginalized or ignored. She at least entertains the idea of permanently marking her skin with that hatred, like a convict signaling gang affiliation.
Pretty harsh words from someone whose YouTube handle used to be TheHappyMisogynist. (Check the URL here.)
So what exactly is the point of publicizing her name, which will give the assholes now posting rape threats and other violent shit about the demonstrators at that Warren Farrell protest the real name of a real, live person to harass?
Elam, while carefully avoiding any direct incitement of harassment and/or violence, makes clear that his aim is to “stop her.”
[She] is not going to stop. And no one at the University of Toronto is going to stop her. We can figure that one out by the fact that they chartered clubs to enable that kind of conduct.
For that reason, we bring her to public attention here at AVfM.
Additionally, over the next two days, she will be listed on register-her.com as a known bigot, and her image and name will find a place on our display of featured offenders.
Elam promises to do the same, by name, to others who attended the protest as well.
The best way to strike back at Elam’s campaign to shut up critics of his hateful Men’s Rights ideology? Make more noise.
If anyone is interested in reaching out to the student and any others who may be targeted by Elam, please contact me or leave a comment below. And if anyone knows how to contact her, please send me an email.
(Also, at one point Elam describes Farrell as “an individual who has dedicated a lifetime to helping children in trouble.” Oh, is that what he was doing when he was working on a book that he said would highlight the alleged “positive” aspects of incest?)
EDITED TO ADD: Just to make clear, this woman is not the same woman that Elam and JohnTheOther were talking about in their previous posts; it’s a different woman, who appears only briefly in that video. It’s not clear if they have the other woman’s info, but if not they are certainly still looking for it.
A Voice for Men’s Attempts to Find and Publicize the Personal Information of a Toronto Activist Could Threaten That Young Woman’s Safety
[TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE THREATS]
The Men’s Rights movement has been described by some as “the abusers’ lobby.” I don’t think that’s fair, but there are certainly those within the movement that fit the bill – not necessarily because they themselves are abusers, but because, among other things, they lionize abusers and advocate on their behalf.
In the case of hate site A Voice for Men, there is another way in which the term applies: the “activism” of the site and its followers, insofar as it consists of anything more than self-promotion, often mirrors the actions of abusers – AVFM is known for harassing individuals, usually women, and exposing (or threatening to expose) personal information that could be used to stalk and harm them, in an attempt to intimidate them and other feminists and shut them up. Indeed, the site on several occasions has offered $1000 “bounties” on the personal information of its foes.
We’ve Reached a New Low in Misogynistic Self-Righteousness
The kitties are not impressed with your argument, Mr. Anonymous
So our excitable old friend MarkyMark (not the actor-singer) just put up a not-very-original rant of the “women are worse than Hitler because of abortion” variety. More interesting than his post — which is frankly not very interesting — is this comment from an anonymous fellow that takes misogynistic self-righteousness to a whole new (low) level:
This is one of the reasons that I use women for my convenience. They can kill with impunity – nothing I do to them comes close to that level of evil. So they are for my pleasure, then I ditch them although I do come back sometimes. (They aren’t very bright which is what makes it workable.)
Yep: He’s not just a self-righteous prick; he’s self-righteous about being a prick.
I can only hope his own “evil” is mostly of the “slept with a woman and didn’t call her back” sort — or is just imaginary internet boasting — because his “logic” could pretty much justify anything short of violent murder.
Splitsville! A Voice for Men and Bernard Chapin are having a sort-of-hilarious feud
(Tempest not pictured.)
If you stuff a bunch of angry, narcissistic, egotistical twits into a “movement” the size of a teapot, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be drama. So I’m pleased to report on a dramatic BREAKING STORY in the Men’s Rights “movement” – a split between A Voice for Men and the bald, blabby, bigoted far-right videoblogger Bernard Chapin.
Well, I’m not sure how much of a BREAKING STORY it is. It happened about three weeks ago, but I only just noticed it yesterday.
On Popes, PUAs, The Pill and the Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel
I’m pretty sure this isn’t how birth control actually works.
You might think that Pickup Artists, dudes obsessed with sexing up the young fertile lasses, would be huge fans of contraceptives – which, after all, are what makes their particular lifestyle possible. But some prominent PUAs are about as enthusiastic about contraception as a Pope.
In the case of the charming fellow who calls himself Heartiste, I mean this literally. In a recent posting, he quotes approvingly from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Humanae Vitae dissing contraceptives for allegedly demeaning the women that use them. Paul suggested that contraception may cause men to
lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.
I’m no Pope, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.
American Women and Stupid Girls: Misogynistic Lyrics as Faux Social Critique
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: Spokesmen for Clean Living
Listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” the other day, I was struck by how much the lyrics resembled a misogynistic MRA rant. Ostensibly a song pointing out the hypocrisy of suburban squares attacking the drug culture whilst themselves popping prescription pills, the song extends its “critique” to cover such subjects as the evil of women making cakes from mixes instead of from scratch. (See below for videos of all the songs mentioned in this post.)
The Coming Single Mom Crime Apocalypse: Not Really a Thing
Manosphere misogynists love fantasizing about a coming apocalypse, invariably caused by the bad behavior of feminists and/or women in general, and invariably resulting in feminists and/or women in general lost and forlorn and realizing their mistakes, returning to men begging for help and asking for forgiveness. Like Doomsday Preppers waiting for the planet to suddenly shift on its axis due to the sudden reversal of the magnetic poles, most of the apocalyptic misogynists don’t seem to have the faintest idea of what they’re talking about.
