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.
@Brett K:
Totally right about Cassandrasays… although I’ve never thought about hating all women before, because Cassandrasays was critical towards some men, my Y chromosome just took over and has forced me to stop liking women, and loving my wife, and has made me angry to the point of apoplexy towards more than half of the human race.
All your fault, Cassandrasays.
Improbable Joe: To echo rutee, nothing wrong with it, but it doesn’t address the problem. Shooting your gmail inbox isn’t going to affect the bullies.
On a more practical note… to be any good with a pistol requires a lot of things.
1: Possession. Call that, more or less, $500.
2: Legal right to carry (yes, you can beat some of the rap if the homicide was justified, but if you are patted down for some reason, that’s going to be a problem). That’s often more money.
3: Practice: Until one is comfortable, that’s at least once a week, at least one box (50 rds) a week. For some aspects range ammo (about $12 a box) will do. When it comes to carry ammo, at least one box needs to be fired. That’s going to be more.
3a: Once one is comfortable one needs to dry fire regularly, and live fire at least a few times a year.
4: Carrying is work. Add an extra few lbs to your purse/belt, each day, every day.
5: Mental space. Carrying requires looking at people/situations differently.
5a: Mental space. You have to be willing to kill someone. That’s also (more than people think) a training thing.
6: Practice. The range isn’t pulling the piece in a street situation. So one has to go to non-range places one can see how hard it is to draw when sitting down, standing up, going through a door, lying down.
6a: One also needs to be able to shoot in those circumstance, which most ranges don’t allow. Finding a space for live fire where this is allowed safe is sometimes difficult.
6b: One needs to practice clearing jams/malfunctions.
7: Mindset. When startled/attacked, the weapon has to be the first/second thing you reach for/pull.
7a: Mindset: When startled; not attacked, you have to not pull the piece if it’s not reasonable.
8: Repercussion: Reaching/pulling the weapon may get you less than desirable police attention, see 2.
In practical terms, to have a pistol handy, outside the home, requires, not less than an hour a week of practice, week in, week out. To have it inside the home requires a different amount of practice. Dry fire is your friend but it requires discipline.
If one carries more than one pistol, make sure enough practice is done that the ways in which the weapons are different (which includes jams/clearing malfunctions).
When I was in practice, I probably had a weapon in my hands 3-4 hours a week, and at least 10 minutes every day.
My innate womanly evilness strikes again.
Off to find a fluffy white cat to stroke while I cackle.
Improbable Joe – As a libertarian, I have to advocate that you recommend not just gun ownership, but three guns for everyone!
Also read what pecunium said.
Then come back to fantasy land. Oh yeah.
However, shotguns are much easier to shoot. And can look much more intimidatin’ 😉
I strongly support gun ownership by women. It’s not useless even if it brings you nothing but peace of mind, and as someone who knows people who have successfully defended their homes and children with guns, I think there are more practical reasons as well.
zhinxy: Re shotguns? For what purpose.
Trivia question time.
1: What distance are most (non-military) confrontational shootings?
2: At that range what is the spread of a legal minimum shotgun at moderate choke (the typical, “combat” shotgun)?
Answers:
1:Less than 30 feet.
2: At 30 feet the spread on a minimum/moderate shotgun is about 3″.
They have to be aimed as much as any other weapon at that range. They are larger, heavier, have more recoil.
Because of the length they are less “handy” (i.e. they are harder to move from one target to another). What they are aimed at is easier to determine (this does assume the person on the muzzle end is calm enough to be looking to this) which makes them less useful against multiple attackers.
They are, because of how easy (relative to a pistol) to determine the pointing of, which makes a disarming attack easier to initiate. Because of length they are easier to succeed in disarming.
All in all, for close in fighting, pistols (or revolvers) are much closer to ideal.
In the home, I recommend long cutlery, esp. something which long, and pointed, but dull on the sides, not least because the chance to correct for mistaken identity is greater, and the likelihood of fatal errors is greatly reduced.
I support gun ownership by women but don’t think it’s a panacea. Not only is it not trivial to get good with a gun, not only is it an inappropriate response to most kinds of bullying, but so much violence against women is done by people they’re close to. I can shoot an intruder; I can’t shoot my boyfriend. (And even if I could it’d be a lot harder to explain to the cops.)
Guns are valuable tools but definitely not a full solution to violence against women, and it worries me when they’re oversold as “now no one will ever dare hurt you!”
Mostly, I’m just tired of dragging my own ass around, plus a few pounds of gun and ammo, every time my wife goes outside after dark… and I’m VERY well-trained, and can do the training for my wife which saves a few bucks.
Of course, this was more of a hypothetical thing, which is the hypothetical in which the MRAs and misogynists stop seeing women as easy victims, and stop with the ridiculous attacks based on perceived weakness. A bunch of feminist gun clubs would be pretty cool…
Agreed 100% Holly. Guns are definitely not a panacea.
On a related note, for those of us who don’t live with abusive partners, I find the “your SO might shoot you in a rage!” thing kinda…silly. On accident is a valid concern that can be addressed with gun safety rules.
… and no, I don’t think it is the solution. For all I know, it would give MRAs an excuse to kill women instead of just beating them up. Forget I even said anything, it IS kind of dumb.
ps. I’d still hit the “make all guns everywhere disappear forever” button if such existed. At least for hand guns.
@Fuck MRAs
Screw that “make all guns everywhere disappear forever” button… I just dropped a bunch of cash!!!
I like weapons (guns, knives, swords, sticks, cannon, etc.). They are tools. They are tools of limited utility.
The biggest problem with weapons is keeping them ready to hand. Even in my house, were I can distribute them as I see fit, I am rarely inside of arms reach, and often more than 10 feet from one (this is disregarding any minor cutlery which may be on my person).
The flip side, is all the mental preparation. At that level (ready to try to make fun of my, “posing as a badass” MRAL?), I am never our of arms reach of a weapon. If I can throw a blunt object, I am in arms reach.
I’ll spout hot-coffee on you if I’m walking down the street (and if I am nervous, I’ll keep it there, so that, even if it’s gotten cold, I can spew it in someone’s face, which is really good at breaking their possession of the initiative).
But that requires all sorts of practice, controlled paranoia, situational assessment and the willingness to overreact, and then stop (because the overreaction, can be put down to “heat o the moment, if you stop as soon as possible
As Holly alluded, being violent is problematic as a solution to most things, and not at all useful in others.
I like crossbows.
Oh wow, this sucks…
Pecunium, I was being a little silly and agree with your cutlery rec for in the home, but if you’ve got a big land area, well, on the porch with a shotgun is a classic scare tactic 😉
And yes, a pistol is certainly better for close, but then again, people have preferences, and they aren’t the worst home defense weapon either, http://archives.gunsandammo.com/content/home-defense-shotgun
PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth – they taught me to shoot in the Coast Guard, but I’m way more killer with a bow and arrow XD
There’s also the issue of what happens to our hypothetical woman, legally speaking, if she defends herself with a gun and actually kills someone. There are some areas where she’d probably get off on the grounds of self defense, but others where she would not. I don’t think I like the odds very much, especially for those of us who due to upbringing and/or trauma would probably go for the most lethal response first if we felt threatened.
this is why I think women got the shit end of the stick, biology wise. Not only do we get punished per-say with pregnancy, but we are generally physically weaker too. How do we defend ourselves? Personally I think mandatory self defense classes would be a better choice. With guns or knives you’d need to react quickly and not miss, but with self defense you can learn how to disarm or defend yourself from physical attacks. Even pepper spray has limits, and with the giant purse trend these days it would be hard to dig out on time.
Maybe brass knuckles? lol
I support gun ownership by women but don’t think it’s a panacea. Not only is it not trivial to get good with a gun, not only is it an inappropriate response to most kinds of bullying, but so much violence against women is done by people they’re close to. I can shoot an intruder; I can’t shoot my boyfriend. (And even if I could it’d be a lot harder to explain to the cops.)
Guns are valuable tools but definitely not a full solution to violence against women, and it worries me when they’re oversold as “now no one will ever dare hurt you!”
I absolutley agree. Also, a lot of the guys who yell at women to just get a gun/learn self defense aren’t the kind of guys who are gonna believe that she was acting in self defense when she fires, or just fights back.
Get a gun! Is often the cry of a guy who believes there IS no real “rape problem” etc, and is trying to shut you up, and thus if you use one, you’re a crazy bitch murderer.
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/01/five-reasons-why-teach-women-self.html
See issue 4 in particular.
There’s a lot of social issues surrounding women’s experiences before we can turn “A woman should BLOW A RAPIST MONSTER AWAY!” into “That woman defended herself bravely” and not “She’s a crazy bitch who blew that guy away just for being friendly!”
there’s a lot of social issues surrounding women’s experiences before we can turn “A woman should BLOW A RAPIST MONSTER AWAY!” into “That woman defended herself bravely” and not “She’s a crazy bitch who blew that guy away just for being friendly!” in reality when it actually happens.
forgot that end there.
I like bows, crossbows, slings, pikes, quartersaves, jo, bo, you name it.
I’ve never used full-sized catapults or trebuchet, and I left out things that are really hard to own (machine guns, submachine guns, grenades, etc).
As to The Guns and Ammo piece, in my professional opinion, he’s crackers. All of the things which he says are true, but the drawbacks well outweigh them; not the least the things he didn’t mention, such as the prevalence of shooting high, coupled with the slow rate of fire, and the effect of shooting in an enclosed space (which is one of those things which can’t be easily practiced).
@ Improbable Joe – I wouldn’t say dumb. Americans live in a gun culture, but that doesn’t mean that people necessarily understand or respect guns properly. How often do you hear some fool talking about how all badness and crime would go away if only everyone was packing iron, usually in macho terms that make it clear he believes he could scare trouble away by wagging his dick at it?
As a group, we Lefties aren’t really comfortable with guns, so we don’t usually have an answer that beats said fool on his own terms. A knowledgeable person like Pecunium giving real facts about why arming everyone isn’t a real solution is a real asset, and it’s good that we had the conversation.
@ Quackers – Interestingly enough most people who teach self defence classes will tell you that the biggest hurdle for women is getting over the socialisation that teaches them not to respond to aggression with aggression. Many women find it very difficult to be physically aggressive even when threatened, so a lot of the work self defense classes do is just teaching them how to not freeze and how to hit back, yell, etc.
I still think that the single best thing my father ever did for me was teach me how to hit back when I was being attacked. Not just the throwing a punch part, though that was cool too. It was more the fact that he taught me that it was OK to defend myself, and that I had a right to do so physically if my space was being invaded.
It would really help if all girls got that message as children.
@zhinxy
“Get a gun! Is often the cry of a guy who believes there IS no real “rape problem” etc, and is trying to shut you up, and thus if you use one, you’re a crazy bitch murderer.”
Maybe, but that’s not where I’m coming from. Considering the crap that women get for coming forward with any accusations, I 100% assume that they are telling the truth when then claim self-defense, and still consider their claims plausible even if they lose their legal cases.
The whole gun thing was just in response to the online bullying, where I kind of wondered in a hypothetical case if a couple of pictures of women bloggers at the range might not stifle some of the negative comments. I admit it wasn’t a well-conceived plan, but it certainly wasn’t a justification for dismissing rape claims.