Well, that was … instructive. The Twitter hashtag extravaganza that is #mencallmethings is still going strong. But I think at this point it’s safe to say that it has basically served it’s purpose: to highlight the obnoxious, obscene, often threatening misogynist shit that women who express their opinions about almost anything on the internet get in their inboxes or in comments online on a regular basis. Women with feminist blogs who actually call out this kind of misogyny get this sort of abuse basically every day.
Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, who started up this hashtag campaign, explained in an eloquent and angry blog post why she did it: to point out how absolutely routine this sort of shit is. When she started her blog, she really hadn’t anticipated the sheer volume of vicious shit she’d get:
I got targeted. With threats, with insults, with smear campaigns, with attempts to threaten my employment or credibility or just general ability to get through the day with a healthy attitude and a minimal amount of insult.
The intent of all this abuse is simple: to intimidate. When someone says to a woman online “I hope you get raped with a chainsaw,” the point is to get her to shut up. The person who posts this sort of violent shit, Doyle notes,
hopes that the next time you sit down to write, you’ll remember that yikesy chainsaw-rape thing and think, “you know? Maybe this isn’t such a great idea. Maybe I don’t need to say this. Maybe I’ll piss someone off, and maybe it will be more than I can handle, and you know, maybe my thoughts on this topic just ARE NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH for me to risk the headache/fear/irritation/distress/panic attack I know I will get.”
And then, when you say that aloud, they call you a whiny little girl who can’t handle the Internet. Because, of COURSE multiple chainsaw-rape comments aren’t a big deal! They’re just words! Sticks and stones! …
To you, my friends, I say: Fuck that noise. All of this matters. A hostile work environment matters. Being afraid of your own in-box matters. Deleting your blog because that’s the only way for you to have a normal, non-hate-filled life matters. “Accepting” that continual, virulent, hateful misogynist abuse is a pre-condition for being a lady who talks about thing, or for challenging sexism in any way, no matter who you are: That matters. And if you think we’re fragile, well. LET US COUNT THE WAYS we have hacked it, under conditions your pampered manly self just cannot imagine. LET US DEMONSTRATE FOR YOU the shit we wade through, every day, in order to talk about whether or not we liked that one “Community” episode or Lady GaGa album.
Naturally, critics of the whole hashtag campaign have done their best to minimize and dismiss this sort of routine harassment in exactly the ways that Doyle predicted they would.
The charming Ferdinand Bardamu of In Mala Fide responded to #mencallmethings with a bunch of obnoxious comments that conveniently proved basically every point Sady Doyle was trying to make with the hashtag in the first place. He started off with this bit of rapier wit:
He followed this up with a clumsy fat joke:
He continued on in this vein for awhile, so proud of his insightful critiques that he made a blog post about it.
Encouraged by Bardamu’s example, blogger PMAFT (Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology) announced a #MenCallMeThings Trolling Contest. The highlight of his own contributions to this contest:
Over on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, c0mputar offered slightly more coherent, if equally misguided, response.
The reality is that most of the “misogyny” they face is just criticism to their feminist viewpoints. I see this a lot when I confront feminists arguments, present my arguments, and get called a misogynist, amongst other things characterized by misandry. It happens on both sides …
Really now? Here are some actual examples of comments posted on #mencallmethings (taken from a comment from Shaenon in the discussion here).
here’s some to start: ‘I’ll rape your mum, faggot fuck’ “I’ll come to your house and kill you”
#mencallmethings, impersonate me on FB, & make disgusting sexual comments, post my name & # when I helped organize Slutwalk
cunt, whore, ugly, disgusting, cold, feminazi, shut the fuck up bitch, manipulative, crazy, playing the victim, sociopath
Bitch, whore, being sensitive, little girl, dumb, subject of jokes involving physical and sexual assault.
Any variation on fat and/or ugly at this point just makes me yawn.
I’ve had so many emails and messages telling me I deserve a beating, I don’t even keep track any longer.
“13? Judging by the size of your titties, I’d of thought you were 18.”
(censored version) If you keep talking the way you do, you deserved to get raped.
My #mencallmethings moment – receiving an email consisting of 1600 lines plus of the same insult over and over. My crime? Being fat.
I’ve had so many guys tell me how good I must be in bed because I’m fat and therefor will do anyone
I usually get ‘sweetheart’ just before they dismiss my argument as being ‘stupid’. No counter argument.
Will not repeat the violence that’s been directed at me but this one made me laugh “Blubbering self-important herd animal.”
apparently I’m a lesbian… I was unaware until #mencallmethings.
I’M ON ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND I CANT EVEN JERK OFF CORRECTLY NOW & ITS BECAUSE OF WOMEN SO FUCK ALL YOU INFERIOR COWS
“You should have your tongue ripped out.”
I get sent one rape threat a month on average.
I was once told “get back in the kitchen you ugly bitch” for posting on a Linux board (can’t remember which one now)
Have you ever wanted someone to tell you that your genetalia should be stapled shut with bugs inside, start a blog
How about being choked to death during a forced blowjob? Start a feminist blog.
Not worth the effort to murder: the most recent example of what I had to delete off the blog when #mencallmethings
C0mputar, in his Reddit post, went on to offer another argument that seems to be a favorite of those trying to trivialize the abuse catalogued by the contributors to #mencallmethings:
In the end, veterans of the internet know there is no protected demographic. Everyone gets shit on, but if you make a point of belonging with a group, you get shit on even more, and more so the smaller you are. You know who gets shit on more than feminists? MRAs.
Really? Some MRA types on Twitter tried to get a rival hashtag going: #womencallmethings. Needless to say, they didn’t have much to work with.
One Man Boobz non-fan — whom I banned for his repeated comments about anal rape — tried to post a sarcastic little comment here last night dismissing #mencallmethings on similar grounds. Here’s a screenshot from my wordpress account, with his identifying data erased:
Let’s just, for contrast, take a look at the previous comment he tried to post here:
Another day, another “hope you get raped” comment.
Ironically, though I’m pretty thoroughly disliked across the manosphere, I actually get a lot less of this sort of abuse than most reasonably well-known feminist bloggers who happen to be non-dudes. Oh, sure, I get called a “traitor” and a “mangina,” and once in a while someone points out that I’m, you know, fat, but when it comes to the really nasty shit, the abusive commenters and emailers seem to much prefer going after women. This may be because they are misogynistic assholes. That’s just a theory, though.
Pecunium–November9, 2011 @12:11pm
Good Heavens, Pecunium, your posts get goofier by the day!
“…Meller would probably approve the Swiss law on marriage, as there was still coverture, and where the man wanted to live, the wife had to live…”
Why would I support a law insisting man and wife share the same domicile? How absurd! Everyone knows that the modern way is the best, with hubby in New York, wifey in San Francisco, and their children farmed out to foster care in Detroit, Miami, and Bullfeathers, Mississippi. (Okay, I made up the last location, but you get the idea).
You’re correct! Meller thinks that the law of coverture is a good idea, at least until something better comes along, and it is a sound alternative to the bloody mess which characterises all too many contemporary families(?) outlined above! Maybe WE should learn from our Swiss friends and return to it!
Also someone “above it all” wouldn’t care whether or not people interpreted his metaphors correctly.
We get a weirdly large amount of anti-semitic storm front stuff about “the Alas Jews.” It gets worse when one of the “Alas a Blog guy”s cartoons gets linked around the scaryosphere.
Barry is such a sweetheart. I love that guy.
I recomend getting a bear.
Even Steven Colbert is scared of bears.
I’m
SparticusScott Adams!@Ami
Now you’re just being hateful. 😛
@VoiP
Or lonely jewish goatherders…
I’ve never had a blog, but when I was in grad school, I used to post on a few of the Usenet newsgroups on women and feminism. I was fairly vocal and I made some enemies on those newsgroups. One morning, I opened my inbox and found about thirty nasty emails. It turned out that someone had faked a post pretending to be me, saying how much I hated men, all men deserved to die, etc. Anyone could tell from the headings of the post that it wasn’t from my university account that I normally posted from, but the men who had emailed me hadn’t checked. I think two of them apologized for their emails. Rather than apologies, it turned into a big debate of how I either had faked it myself or how although someone else had faked the post, the comments in the post were what I really thought, but was too chicken to post, so I deserved no sympathy for the fake post.
Some of the men told me that they were going to contact my university to complain of my “hate speech.” I figured I’d eventually be cleared since the post was an obvious fake, but it wasn’t something I wanted to have to deal with. It didn’t stop me from posting again, but I posted a lot less and was much more careful writing my posts. So, it didn’t silence me completely, but it did to some degree. It also taught me not to comment or post from an “official” account.
@Bionicmommy
I see a Jason Statham franchise in this…
At times, I feel very out of step here. I know nothing about hockey and have no desire to, and I like Brussels sprouts even when they’ve been cooked to death.
Don’t feel bad, Wisteria. Feminist hockey nuts are rare creatures, that’s why both of us in this case are going “wait, really?”.
I’m standing my ground on the brussel sprouts, though. They’re quite cute when they’re on the stem, but in terms of taste they’re evil little bundles of why does my aunt make me eat this horrible stuff.
Huh? Ashley was on her knees…what did I miss?
Video or it didn’t happen.
o_O Um, thank you for the food for thought, DKM. Strangely, I see few advantages in having father 1 or father 2 choose me a husband. I suspect I would be even less enthused if I was attracted to women exclusively.
But, wait, does the man in the pair get to accept or reject potential wives? Because if not, a fine upstanding gent like you might end up with a totally unfluffy feminist like me! All educated and opinionated and wanting a career and other gross things like that! Plus there’s my quite unwifely habit of having sex with my boyfriend–you know, the guy I’m with because we love and respect each other.
Tsk tsk, Brandon, don’t you have computers that you need to be fixing during the day?
(Yes, I realise that he’s full of shit.)
Sex isn’t that rare or impressive a thing for human beings to do, honey.
Aw, look, he thinks we’re in awe that he’s a big boy!
His wife is Jewish, his father was Jewish, and he’s received anti-Jewish slurs before (maybe from you). Which I know you know, because you stalk his blog.
Wisteria–November 9, 2011@ 3:02pm–
Yes, Wisteria, the proposed groom would indeed have the option of refusing the offered bride-to-be. I don’t know what you would do if your taste ran to women, although the legalization of gay “marriage” might help you here.
I would think that the genetic father would have first dibs on whom his daughter marries, but a stepfather–depending on how involved the birth father was in her life, etc–may be involved too. I suspect that there is room for a number of answers to your question here. depending on cmmunity standards.
As far as loving a boyfriend after you are safely married, I think that would fall under the “adultery” ban, and unfortunately, would have to be ‘verboten’.
As far as your being an educated ‘feminist’, with career ambitions outside the home, I would think that your mother, grandmothers, and older women would have set you (and your sisters) straight about that foolishness, although nowadays, even women subject to arranged marriages seem to be finding opportunities in female-specific careers!
The times, they are a-changin’- I guess…
In any event, I should think that you (and other women privy to such arrangements) would be reliably protected from rape or sexual harassment.on the streets and in public!
I actually wouldn’t mind excessively having my father pick my life partner, mostly because he would leave the decision to me, because he is less of a fuckhead than Meller. He would tell me to get married to my best friend and someone whom I like spending time with and that hotness fades with age but sparkling conversation never does. I generally value his opinion (and my mom’s) about people to date; they’ve been married for twenty years, they must know something. 🙂
Unfortunately, a couple of important dealbreakers (I’m poly and kinky and need someone who’s okay with my pansexuality, genderblogging, genderqueer fabulosity and crazy) he doesn’t know about, which makes his picking my partner non-optimal.
I really have little to say to that, David, beyond… hurrk. But as a point of clarification, there is a Wisteria and a Viscaria on this blog. Wisteria was here first, and had I noticed hir commenting here before I began commenting myself I would have chosen a different pseudonym. Sorry Wisteria, and sorry anyone else who has been confused.
Ozy, isn’t it nice having parents who think you’re a capable, thinking adult? *High five*
When I was little my dad used to joke that if we lived in the Middle Ages he would have married me off to a rich man twice my age in exchange for a bunch of cows. “How many cows do you think I would get?” he’d ask. And I would be like “TWENTY” and he’d be like “for my little girl, I don’t think I could go any lower than thirty.”
DKM, unfortunately, does not seem to regard this as a silly joke.
Ozy – Seriously! All these (are they even MRAs at this point? they’re more just regular misogynists) “women should let men decide everything” trolls have forgotten that the vast majority of men don’t want to decide.
If my life decisions were left up to my father, my boyfriend, or really any other man that I’m close to, I think that a combination of decency and laziness would immediately lead them to go “my decision is whatever her decision is.”
My mistake; apologies to all concerned!
DKM
I checked and Schwyzer isn’t Jewish, he’s Christian. It’s plastered all over his blog. Nice try, dumbass.
Hugo had a post recently about how he’s not Jewish, but does get tons of anti-Semitic harassment–he might have even said it’s the most common type he gets–because racists see his name and assume he’s Jewish. In fact, I’m pretty sure you linked to that post, because those are the only times I usually read Hugo’s blog.
Thank you for your apology, DKM. (It is for everything, right?)
It’s good to see change. 🙂
I don’t stalk Schwyzer’s blog, I really have no idea where you got that notion. I visit it semi-regularly, and no, I had no idea what his religion was.
I forgot about the anti-Semitic slur from some guy who I’ve said many times was not me and whose IP address Futrelle has checked against mine and found a non-match. Still, I hardly think one insult (clearly, it was worse than it typical because he made a posted about it) is indicative of much of anything.
And you’re all avoiding the issue, which is that male feminists get attacked just as much, maybe more. Doesn’t fit in with your victim fetish worldview, I guess.