Blog Archives
Men’s Human Rights Movement fights oppression with new oppression-fighting term “Rapetard.”
The Men’s Human Rights Movement: Heading towards inevitable victory.
Our dear friends over at A Voice for Men, the thought-leaders of the Glorious New Men’s Human Rights of The 21st Century Human Rights Movement With Girl Writes What (GNMHROT21CHRMWGWW) have been trying to introduce a new word into the vernacular, as part of their broad-based campaign for the betterment of human rights. That word? Rapetard.
While the portmanteau word has been floating around for some time, with assorted definitions, it took on its modern, human-rightsy definition in mid-April in a little-seen YouTube video by a fellow calling himself “Dick Magnum,” who defined it thusly:
An individual who, for reasons related to intellectual, emotional or moral deficits, cannot distinguish between questioning [the idea of] “rape culture” and supporting rape.
It was picked up in an AVFM post titled “Beware the Rapetard Society” about a week after that. Soon other AFVM writers seemed to forget Mr. Magnum’s careful definition, adopting it as their go-to epithet for feminists they don’t like. Which is pretty much all of them.
In a post having nothing to do with rape or rape culture, Paul Elam talked about “dumbing things down so that even a rapetard could understand.” In the comments to that post, AVFM contributor Dan Perrins joked about “rapetarded quote mining expedition[s].” And in a post yesterday, AVFM’s “Andy Bob” attacked Australian comedian Catherine Deveny for an assortment of alleged offenses against decency — including using the term “retard” – in a post that referred to her as a “rapetard” four times, including once in the title.
You might think that combining the word “rape” with an ableist slur –“tard” – and applying it liberally to feminist women would be a step backwards in the campaign for human rights, but apparently that’s old-fashioned twentieth century thinking on my part.
The Myth of Warren Farrell: Farrell on Rape, Part One
No book has had more influence over the Men’s Rights movement than Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power. Published in 1993, in the heyday of the early 90s antifeminist backlash, it set the agenda for the Men’s Rights movement as it’s developed over the last two decades. He’s the one who came up with the notions of “male disposability” and the “death professions.” He’s the one who got MRAs fixated on the issue of draft registration.
Funny Men’s Rights Video Time!
Don’t worry, it’s not a video BY an MRA. It’s a video ABOUT MRAs. A little cartoon, to be specific, by Scott Benson, who has this to say about it on his Vimeo page:
A quick editorial cartoon about the intersection of self-pity, entitlement, rape, territoriality, misogyny and fear of women. You see it all over the place online in the form of Men’s Rights Activists (of whom there are a few reasonable non-misogynists), Men Going Their Own Way, Pick Up Artists, and dudes touting the “Red Pill”, because The Matrix is a good movie. Look any of these up if you have the stomach for it. These are extreme examples, but watered-down forms of these ideas are everywhere.
In lurking their blogs and youtube channels for a while, I’ve noticed that beyond the standard patriarchal chauvinism there is this deep fear of women – what they will do to me, how they will reject me, how they will use me, how they are changing society in a way that does not favor me, how they are making men into something I don’t like, how they are making themselves into something I don’t like, that they won’t give me what I want, and that they won’t give me what I think is rightfully mine. This goes beyond fear of feminism- this is fear of women at its purest. And that, to quote a puppet, leads to anger and hate. It’s sad.
Naturally, Benson had to close the comments to the video because of, you know, too much MRA.
He wrote more about it all on his Tumblr.
I was alerted to the video by various people, including Cloudiah, which reminds me to remind you all to go look at Cloudiah’s excellent Artistry for Feminism And Kittens blog.
How bad ideas get started: The “Apex Fallacy,” the “Frontman Fallacy,” and the murderer Marc Lepine
Would MRAs still be into the Apex Fallacy if boards of directors looked like this?
So some Men’s Rightsers are up in arms because the powers that be at Wikipedia just deleted a page devoted to a phony “logical fallacy” invented by a friend of Paul Elam. According to the now-deleted Wikipedia page, “the apex fallacy refers to judging groups primarily by the success or failure at those at the top rungs (the apex, such as the 1%) of society, rather than collective success of a group.”
Signal Boost: Official Georgetown statement on false accusations against Arianna Pattek
I‘ve written several times about the campaign of false accusations and harassment directed at Georgetown University alum Arianna Pattek by Men’s Rights activists, white supremacists, and assorted internet trolls. While some of Pattek’s false accusers have retracted their claims, others continue to peddle false information about her and still others, including some of those who’ve retracted their claims about Pattek, continue to make vague accusations against Georgetown.
And so I would like to draw attention to the following official statement from Georgetown University spokesperson Rachel Pugh.
In response to inquiries regarding Georgetown University alumna Arianna Pattek and the Admissions Office at Georgetown University:
Georgetown University confirms that Arianna Pattek graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service with a bachelor’s degree in 2012. On April 18, 2013 she was mistakenly identified as the author of an anonymous blog, and as a result became the target of threats on several Internet discussion boards. Out of concern for the safety and well-being of our alumna, the university removed information about Ms. Pattek from the university’s website. Georgetown University further confirms that Ms. Pattek is not now, nor has she ever been, employed by any of the admissions offices at Georgetown University. The unethical admissions practices described in the anonymous blog post do not reflect the careful and comprehensive admissions procedures at Georgetown University. Ms. Pattek has confirmed that she is not the author of the blog in question. Further, the blog in question does not reference Georgetown University.
You can find the statement online here, and can direct any questions about Georgetown’s handling of this whole surreal incident to them directly.
Though I really have to wonder at anyone who pretends to be shocked or surprised or mystified that university officials might remove information about a recent graduate after receiving word that this person is being harassed by white supremacists.
You can find more details about all this in my earlier posts on the subject.
The Feminist Hegemony will destroy your hard drive, and other things I learned from Erin Pizzey’s return visit to Reddit
Be vewy quiet! Most men wive wives of quiet desperwation.
Two weeks ago, you may recall, antifeminist crusader and recent A Voice for Men recruit Erin Pizzey made an “Ask Me Anything” appearance on Reddit which was a rousing success, at least by the standards of Reddit and the Men’s Rights movement. (By the standards of logic and ordinary human decency, not so much.) This Saturday, she gave a sort of encore.
Big Manosphere Reveal: Matt Forney was Ferdinand Bardamu
Matt Forney’s a dick, so here are some goats in a tree.
Longtime readers of Man Boobz may remember “Ferdinand Bardamu,” the pseudonymous blogger behind the thoroughly despicable In Mala Fide blog. How despicable? Well, once upon a time, “Bardamu” wrote a post with the lovely title “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” in which he set forth the proposition that “[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.” Yeah. It was that kind of a blog. You can find some more of Bardamu’s terrible thoughts in the MB archives.
Saruman Vs. the Sh*tlords
Today, something kind of amazing that’s been making its way around Tumblr: a recording of Saruman – well, someone doing a pretty good impersonation of Christopher Lee as Saruman — doing a dramatic reading of an MRA-ish rant from a Reddit shitlord.
You’ll have to listen closely, because the rant is a bit convoluted and concern-trolly. Also, the commenter comes back with a couple of edits after he gets benned from whatever subreddit this took place in, apparently SRS.
Listen to it here.
Thanks to MollyRen for bringing this to my attention.
EDITED: Definitely not Mr. Lee.
A Voice for Men attacks a male activist — with a rape joke reference
John Hembling (John The Other) evidently has rape on the brain.
In an apparent attempt to prove that they’re not misogynists, the folks at A Voice for Men have decided to take a temporary break from their practice of vilifying individual female activists to vilify a male activist – University of Toronto Student Union VP for University Affairs Munib Sajjad.
As far as I can tell, the folks at A Voice for Men decided to target Sajjad, perversely, because he told Toronto’s CityNews that he was afraid he was “going to be targeted” after announcing publicly that he thought a campus Men’s Rights group should be banned. The A Voice for Men post about Sajjad is a typically long-winded, and largely content-free, rant from the excitable John Hembling (“John The Other”).
But what’s more disturbing than Hembling’s empty bloviating on Sajjad is the way A Voice for Men has framed the attack. “Munib Sajjad, it’s your turn in the barrel,” the headline declares, and Hembling repeats the phrase “your turn in the barrel” in the post itself.
I wasn’t familiar with this phrase, so I looked it up, and found that it derives from a rape joke. Here’s the definition of the term, from Urban Dictionary:
To say someone is “in the barrel” or “taking a turn in the barrel” means it’s their turn to do an unpleasant task or to suffer an unpleasant experience.
Click on the “definition” link above to see the gang rape joke it’s derived from.
Rape jokes aimed at men — even men you don’t like — are certainly a, well, counterintuitive way of showing “compassion for boys and men,” as the A Voice for Men slogan has it.
EDITED TO ADD: Looking again at Hembling’s piece, I realize I hadn’t noticed his, er, argument that the term “mansplaining” — which I find useful from time to time — is somehow equivalent to the incredibly offensive term “[racial slur redacted]splaining,” which Hembling has just made up. (The slur in question starts with an “n.” You can figure it out.) This is ridiculous on its face, not to mention that it’s frankly racist not only to compare the alleged oppressions of men — who are not systematically oppressed — with those of black people — who are — but also to use a racial slur in doing so. Of course this isn’t the first time that A Voice for Men has used the n-word in an attempt to suggest that men, collectively, have it as bad as a historically disadvantaged and still systematically oppressed group.
Rape jokes and racial slurs: A Voice for Men has it all!
Lazy Libel 2: Georgetown prof debunks the alleged Arianna Pattek conspiracy. And more on Stormfront
Men’s Rights Activists have a lot more in common with white supremacists than they’d like to admit.
Just a quick update on the case of Arianna Pattek, the recent Georgetown graduate targeted for harassment by A Voice for Men and others, including the white supremacists at Stormfront. As I pointed out in an earlier piece, the “detective work” that led A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam and the other Pattek-bashers to target her was incredibly inept and sloppy, and it’s clear beyond any possible doubt that she has nothing whatsoever to do with the misandrist blog they accused her of writing, which increasingly obviously seems to be an utter hoax.
