So somebody, and I honestly don’t know who, tried a little experiment last night on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit: claiming to be a “long time lurker and closet-convert to the MRM [with] some thoughts to share that I’ve been working on for a long time,” the (ostensibly male) prankster cut-and-pasted the excerpts of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto that I highlighted in my last post and presented them to the Men’s Rightsers as if they were his own writings. The prankster also pretended to be posting on a throwaway account because his “GF has a reddit account and I’m not ready to open that bag of worms yet.” (All of the excerpts in question were from posts from far-right blogger Fjordman that Breivik had incorporated into his “manifesto.”)
So how did Breivik/Fjordman’s views (not identified as such) go over on r/MensRights? Pretty well, it turns out, with the post receiving (when last I checked) about twice as many upvotes as downvotes from the locals. “Nice post man.,” wrote darkamir in a comment. To FascistOrigami, meanwhile,
The beautiful thing about this post (beyond the fact that it hits all the major issues): every feminist on reddit whose bf is also on reddit will be wondering if the OP is her guy.
The biggest bone of contention? That the (fictional) OP felt he had to hide his views from his (fictional) girlfriend. “If you have a girlfriend who you have to hide things from, she should not be your girlfriend,” wrote one commenter. Others worried that the OP might be in an abusive relationship if “he” felt he couldn’t speak his mind. Tomek77, in perhaps the most ironic comment of the bunch, warned the OP that he might get a violent reaction if he revealed his views to his “GF.”
Just a piece of advice: I would be very careful about sharing your thoughts with your gf (if you care about your relationship).
For some reason that still escapes my understanding, many women go absolutely bat-shit crazy when they are faced with the reality of gender relations in the west.
To this day, I remember one of my ex-gf literally entering crazy-mode, screaming, yelling and physically shaking after I mentioned that it doesn’t make sense for men to get married under the current law. I swear, I was expecting to see foam coming from her mouth at any moment – and we have only been dating for a week!!
Even in more casual social settings, I have seen many women react very violently and irrationally when men’s issues were mentioned in the conversation. So proceed with caution..
Several hours after the original post, one of the regulars figured out what was going on. And posted a link to my post here on Breivik. Needless to say, my ideas got a much harsher reception than Breivik/Fjordman’s did, though judging from the comments very few of the regulars actually bothered to read my post before arriving at their conclusions about it.
@Holly:
Well, this particular spree killer, anyway. It must be a real mind-bender for them when feminists say “Who, Valerie Solanas? Yeah, she may call herself a feminist, but I think she’s pretty terrible, and doesn’t represent our views.” Like… Wait, you can’t just go against the group like that! You’d be down-voted to oblivion!
I never heard of her ’til I started lurking here. I’m not exactly a spring chicken. That should tell you something.
Kirby – I also think it’s a bit telling that Valerie Solanas died 23 freaking years ago, and there is no apparent heir to the “evil feminist” throne except a tiny handful of anonymous angry blog posts that MRAs continually pass around like sacred texts.
I first learned about Valerie Solanas from Venture Brothers.
They had an episode with characters who were basically the Scooby Doo gang crossed with famous murderers. The Velma analogue was “Val,” whose lines were all direct quotations from The SCUM Manifesto. I thought they were doing a bad parody of feminists until I learned what the character was based on.
My favourite, though, was “Sonny” (Shaggy) who had hallucinations of his dog telling him to kill people (like the Son of Sam, obviously).
Echoing the points made above that Valerie Solanis is in no way know by, considered representative of, or celebrated by most feminists–AND the fact that anti-feminists cannot come up with a dozen more “terrorist feminists” is also notable. And by terrorist feminists, I mean self identified feminists who go out and shoot at people or try to blow them up, just like all those nice white Christian men do.
Plus, while women do kill, the “pick up weapons and kill as many strangers as possible based on an extreme ideology in public” killing sprees seem to be mostly done by men.
I don’t think it’s “natural”–it’s very much in the social construction of a traditional masculinity. But it is (as far as I know) only men.
Andrea Dworkin, the source of all evil. In David’s evil feminist quote list, out of 43 evil feminist quotes, 10 were more-or-less genuine Dworkin, one was an unverified Dworkin, and one was a fictional character who was misidentified as Dworkin — over a quarter of the total.
Dworkin is also dead though….
Johnny Pez – These guys are really going to have to find someone who’s alive one of these days if they want to make the case that their persecution is ongoing.
The first time I heard of Solanis was in college in the early 80s, when I read Jean Stein’s biography of Edie Sedgwick.
The first time I heard of her was when the movie came out. I was never a big fan of the Factory crowd.
Holly – Hillary Clinton was in the running for a while, but she sort of dropped off the wingnut radar after Bill’s term ended. Ah, if only she had been elected President . . .
Hillary had an unfortunate tendency to not advocate for gendercide or even talk about men’s inferiority, though. She’s not an Evil Feminist, she’s just a garden-variety Uppity Woman.
Yet much of Breivik’s focus on feminism is due to it’s use as a leveraging tool to allow Muslims into his country. Breivik seems only to care about feminism because it softens the country against immigration that he disapproves of. So I find it curious that you attach Breivik to MRAs when only 19 pages (of over 1500 in pdf version) of it was devoted directly to feminism. Even then he wrote about how feminism helped grease the wheels for Islam’s entrance into his country.
Yeah, it looks like Dworkin’s reign of terror from beyond the grave will continue unabated.
Zombie Dworkin?
So I find it curious that you attach Breivik to MRAs when only 19 pages (of over 1500 in pdf version) of it was devoted directly to feminism.
The point isn’t that Breivik was an MRA (I certainly hope we’re not exporting something so embarrassing), but that a crazy murderers inspirations and thought process are so in line with MRA reasoning that they can’t distinguish the two.
Even then he wrote about how feminism helped grease the wheels for Islam’s entrance into his country.
‘kayyy? crazy anti-feminist makes crazy claims about feminism. not sure where that helps your case, champ.
I think the first time I heard of Solanas was in Ultra Violet’s autobiography. Not exactly mainstream.
And it’s not just the anti-feminist diatribe that looks the same. In the Thomas Ball thread on the Spearhead, MRAs voiced hopes that a similar event will happen in their countries, for their pet issues. More than a few commenters warned of future suicide bombings and other acts of violence, of which Ball’s self-immolation was but a precursor. Mind you, not all of them were, certainly; many advocated simply fleeing the country or engaging in nonviolent protest. But jeez. Anyone thinking that there are no parallels to be drawn here has gotta be kidding.
Sharculese, it makes perfect sense. Being a misogynist and anti-feminist is fine as long as you don’t have anything against women, personally, and are just in a murderous rage because they’re refusing their obligations as breeding stock.
It’s interesting that the people who come here to defend themselves don’t really say, “but we don’t think like he does” so much as they say, “Feminists are as bad as he is.”
Which is a form of cheap justification. If my enemy is bad, then I am allowed to be bad too.
I’m amused that it was a reference to Man Boobz which was used to blow the lid off of the whole thing.
Here’s a thought
Pecunium – That happens a lot. The traditional MRA response to accusations of misogyny isn’t “we’re not misogynistic,” it’s “you’re misandrist!”
I’ve heard a lot of “feminists hate men,” but not so much “we don’t hate women.”
Which may tie back into the groupthink thing. (As well as some plain old “if a feminist tries to make me say the sky is blue, I won’t give her the satisfaction” stubbornness.) I think saying “I don’t hate women” is another one of those things that makes you a white knight mangina and gets you voted off the island.
Wackypedia lists Norway’s Muslim population as estimated between 2 and 3.4%. Not quite a tidal wave there. It says the number increased by about 10% between 2006 and 2009; not surprising considering how many Muslims were departing from America’s Mideast Adventureland.
Guess it’s the resurrection of the “one drop” theory.
Right, NAWALT, but everyone I have ever met, or will ever meet is like that; “no, not you dearie, you’re different… be a love and make me a sandwich.”
Sorry… I was trying to make it plain that on the MRA fora they say that, not that I somehow believe it.
I didn’t sleep well.