As “activists,” Men’s Rights Activists seem to be good at only two things: harassing people, and flooding comment sections of websites with their endlessly repeated half-dozen talking points. On Reddit, for example, the local MRAs have been quite the little imperialists, invading a number of gender-related subreddits (like r/equality and r/egalitarian) and turning them essentially into r/mensrights-lite, which has effectively meant killing them. (The recently started r/masculism – an attempt to do Men’s Rights on Reddit without all the misogyny – doesn’t have a chance.)
Well, now the MRA invaders on Reddit seem to have set their sights on a much bigger target: the TwoXChromosomes subreddit. Yep, they’re trying to turn Reddit’s central hangout for the ladies into a boys club.
2XC– an explicitly female-oriented forum on a site (Reddit) heavily dominated by dudes — has always been a strange place. Though I am myself, obviously, a dude, I used to read it fairly regularly, finding it a welcome respite from all the “sammich” jokes and other idiot misogyny so pervasive elsewhere on Reddit. At the time, 2XC had a (completely unwarranted) reputation amongst the Reddit crowd as an evil place full of feminazi man-haters.
Then something started happening to 2XC. That thing was dudes. And not just any dudes – MRA dudes. Regulars on r/mensrights started linking to threads in 2XC and invading en masse, downvoting anything vaguely feminist and spewing forth their standard litanies of complaint. Some of these invaders decided to stay. And so, these sporadic raiding parties turned into a sort of occupation.
No, 2XC – despite the growing number of MRA residents, including a few female MRAs – has not turned into another r/mensrights. But at times, especially when the discussion turns to some MRA pet issue, the place looks a lot like dude central.
Case in point: this 2XC thread, expertly dissected by NauticalLittleNet in ShitRedditSays. The story: a woman posts a picture of her Halloween costume on Reddit and is bugged by a rude, creepy comment referring to her breasts (something that happens approximately ten zillion times a day on Reddit). So she posts the pic again to 2XC, hoping for sympathy. Instead, she’s treated to a barrage of comments mocking her for her alleged “persecution complex.” As NauticalLittleNet shows, the overwhelming majority of the obnoxious comments (all of which garnered numerous upvotes) were from dudes, many of them MRAs.
Naturally, this sort of thing – which happens pretty regularly on 2XC – has totally changed the dynamic of the subreddit from something that was sort of a haven for Reddit women to just another subreddit overflowing with obnoxious dudery.
As a Redditor called emmster noted recently in r/feminist, some women in 2XC have basically stopped posting anything vaguely feminist for fear of being jumped on by argumentative dudes:
I’ll be getting downvoted to Hell in the comments, but get PMs that are supportive from women who feel too afraid of the judgment and vitriol to jump in. I don’t love knowing there are women afraid to voice their opinions in a space that’s for women.
Honestly, I think the sustained r/MensRights invasion is what’s taking the largest toll. It’s like they can’t stand the idea that women have a space that’s active and popular, and they have to come ruin it.
And it doesn’t help that, as Donna_Juanita noted in the same discussion, some of the 2XC mods have essentially bent over backwards to accommodate the MRA invaders and to clamp down on feminists allegedly causing “drama.”
In ShitRedditSays, emmster offers a broader take on what’s happened to 2XC
Since young men are a majority on the site as a whole, and a pretty hefty number of them haven’t had the “There Are Places I Am Not Necessarily Welcome to Pontificate on My Opinion” realization, the space becomes less of a place for women, and more of a place to talk about women. Which is a pretty big distinction. And a tricky thing to keep from happening without raising the ire of the entitled, ignorant young dude contingent.
As a reddit friend of mine put it, it all started with the “Hey Ladies, What Do You Think of My Dick?” posts. When a bunch of guys started posting questions, trying to “understand women,” which of course is a flawed goal, because women, being people, have a variety of opinions and preferences, and cannot actually be understood as a group. Some of them were actually questioning preferences on penis size, hence the name of the phenomenon.
My hypothesis is that eventually, it will be nothing but men talking to men about what they think about women.
Not that there is a shortage of such spaces on Reddit, or in the world in general.
By the way, that picture above is not actually a picture of 2XC regulars. It’s a picture of the Huutajat Men’s Shouting Choir. Which is a real thing in the world. Here they are in action:
No comment on EVE (I mean that literally, I know the basics but as i don’t play and never did, I have little of substance to say on this matter), but WoW was only ever like that if you were raiding. The rest is just a computer RPG you can play with friends or strangers, who legitimately can pleasantly surprise you. It’s not work to play games with people just because you’re playing games with people!
Grinding is work, and you will never convince me otherwise! :p
(I haven’t played EVE either, but I’ve heard that for serious players it literally is like a second job just because it’s so complex and you have to be pretty meticulous about your business and politics, etc.)
.Dudes and dudettes, sorry it’s taken so long to get back to this thread, but here’s today’s Big Troll Reveal:
MD520N is indeed … Hengist.
Props to Nobinayamu, who called it early and definitively. Your troil detection skills are mighty!
And MD520N/Hengist is going on the ban list.
I literally have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. If you want to ban me, just say so. I don’t give a shit either way.
Yeah, yeah you do.
Sometimes people don’t cover their tracks as completely as they think they have.
Anyhoo, you’re not banned; I’ll just be keeping you on moderation for awhile.
Greetings, ladies and gents! I just dropped by to pay my respects to this fine blog. I also hear you’ve been harassing some poor new kid, accusing him of switching identities and other such tomfoolery. Why, that’s as preposterous as saying my thick and full-bodied mustache which I’m stroking right now isn’t real! I think you should apologize at once. Right then, carry on.
I got back into WoW again recently after taking a long break (played some free MMOs from Aeria for awhile). The first guild I joined was run by an alcoholic who would pass out while we were waiting for a random, or who would suddenly scream incoherently at everyone and randomly kick people out for being “liars” or “stealing” because he’d forgotten something they told him just minutes before. Anyway, that was scary, but I got a new friend out of it. One of the other guildies fled with me and we’re starting up our own guild now. There are seriously crazy people but seriously awesome people, just like life.
Dude, we know it’s you. There’s no sense in lying when you’ve been caught red-handed.
There are things to be said for forensic analysis. I tend to give people credit, but some sort of grammatical tics, and word choice are familiar.
And the name mangling… that was telling. Everyone else was, no matter how arcane the name, properly referred to. That implies an animus, which means history, which makes one look for patterns.
At which point… one has to have been very careful to avoid getting caught.
“Greetings, ladies and gents! I just dropped by to pay my respects to this fine blog. I also hear you’ve been harassing some poor new kid, accusing him of switching identities and other such tomfoolery. Why, that’s as preposterous as saying my thick and full-bodied mustache which I’m stroking right now isn’t real! I think you should apologize at once. Right then, carry on.”
I am laughing so goddamn hard right now.
Really? Really?!
Free of context… is this the most genuine and honest statement a troll has ever made on this blog? They should just copy paste this for all subjects. 🙂
Yeah, me too. 😐
If Title IX really did put criminal trials in which a man is alleged to have raped a woman on the preponderance of evidence standard, I wouldn’t need to Google it. If it were still in force, it would be on the same level of “everybody knows” that the reasonable doubt standard in criminal law generally is.
And that’s a huge change. There are some pretty powerful, non-feminist men with significant media access. Why didn’t Alan Dershowitz write about this outrage? Why didn’t Richard Posner? Why didn’t Eugene Volokh? (Well, this is Slavey, so I think I know why.) I can’t imagine it would have gotten through without a major outcry; people other than Slavey would still be talking about it. Some of the less thoughtful feminists would still be celebrating it.
Of course, “I can’t imagine” doesn’t prove anything. But neither does a trout in the milk.
malcontent:
Pretty much. Bitter, angry people with weird hypotheses about the nature of reality seem to have a lot of spare time and a compulsion to share that bitterness and those hypotheses whenever the opportunity seems to arise.
mags:
I can stay in New York and sleep with someone I actually like.
Hengist:
So you admit that it doesn’t happen. So on what basis is the opposite justified?
(Not just permitted, justified; there’s a difference)
BlackBloc:
I actually tend to think that’s selection bias. Some (would-be) abusers do give out vibes, but sensible people avoid them. It’s only the ones whose vibes are subtle enough that they can develop a relationship who can get to the point where they can do real damage.
Hershele: you can look at it the other way – abusers seek out women who are already broken.
I don’t think it’s that funny. You guys are weird.
I mean, broken in by previous abusers.
And now Hengist/MD520N has outed himself in a couple of comments (that are sitting in the moderation queue) as Ion/Johnny_B.
Something I suspected but that I didn’t have any proof of, so thanks, dude!
Also, he posted that comment above as TsigneH, so props for that.
Magpie, that’s not fair. Even by that logic, someone “healthy” had to get broken in on a first go around.
Yes, some who chose to be abusers are plain creepy from the get go. Others, very much no. It seems to be oblique victim blaming to say that women put off some vibe that acts like blood in the water.
Amphitrite – I apologise for saying something victim-blaming. I’ll try harder to communicate my thoughts. I agree completely that abusers aren’t easy to spot when you meet them, or even when you have lived with them for a while.
Jesus, if we’re such circle-jerk echo chamber, why can’t these fools stay away?
I am not surpised that Hengist is Ion.
I’m not either. Same childish petulance. Same thin (super thin; translucent really) attempts to appear reasonable and above the fray. Same hypocritical stances on nearly everything with a complete inability to maintain intellectual consistency. Same happy little temper.
What I can’t understand is the need to keep coming back to a place full of nerdy muppets.
It is almost as if Ion/Hengist/MD520N did not have anything better to do.
And it’s almost as if he was lying when he said he didn’t care about this site/what we thought.