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.
Should be: willing to look less buff
MRAL, don’t tell me what you “would” do if you got a completely distasteful offer. You just got one, for real. You don’t sound flattered. You don’t sound grateful. Gosh, you must be pretty stuck up and picky.
(Not knowing if it was a real offer or just cruel mocking adds realism, trust me.)
I only started “verbally abusing” the OKC guys after I had told them to stop messaging me and they didn’t. These were all guys who had ALREADY crossed a specifically stated boundary. That wasn’t just “incompatibility” and it had nothing to do with looks.
Which is really weird, because women are like 52% of the population, so I don’t see how that’s really possible, except for I know it is when I’m “out in the field”. So, got me. Female hypergamy, I think that’s a major factor, but it can’t entirely explain the phenomenon.
It does seem sort of absurd, doesn’t it? That’s because it’s not real. It’s a feeling you’re having. You feel like it’s hard for you to get dates (which might be more plausibly explained by the fact that, as far as I know, you’ve never asked a woman out or even spent much time with one), so you think women are deliberately making it hard. And women look attractive to you, so you figure they feel attractive and wanted.
These ideas you have about how women live… those are feelings. They exist in your head. They are not real. That’s why these threads always fill up with women telling you that your descriptions of their lives are entirely off-base.
I personally prefer the MRAL Show to the Brandon Show, because Brandon is kind of boring (sorry, Brandon). MRAL at least has an entertainingly wonky take on life.
>> I would respond (this simple gesture puts me above about 75% of women on dating sites)
Women on dating sites tend to receive somewhere around 100+ messages a day, most of which are obvious spam (in the sense that the sender went “let’s send some form letter to any woman that’s not a complete troll, and hope one of them responds that she wants to suck my dick”). I’ve had friends close down profiles because they couldn’t keep up with their mailbox.
At some point, one has to prioritize.
That was so not for real, and you know it. I’m not flattered because you’re have no idea who I am or what I look like, and you only made it in service of some “point”, which is lost because I didn’t find it to be a big deal or “offensive” or “scary” or whatever, and you went out of your way to be as unpleasant as possible.
Can we go back to the idea that women who don’t respond to sexual overtures are being “arrogant”? There are a lot of men who’d generally be considered conventionally attractive whose offers of sex I would turn down. This is not because I think I’m better than them, or I deserver a hotter guy, or whatever – it’s because they’re not my type. A few years ago an NFL player tried to pick me up (in a drugstore of all the ridiculous players). I told him no. This is not because HER HOLY HIGHNESS WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS HE’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME, it’s because big muscly macho dudes are not my type.
Not wanting to have sex with someone isn’t usually about perceived relative status in the pecking order. Most of the time it’s a simple is my type/is not my type decision.
MRAL: In MY experience, guys who are decent, and treat women as people, not parts; who don’t think of them as “Gashes and “HER HOLY HIGHNESSES”, get laid.
Pricks, and assholes, don’t.
Add the anger, and hatred which are combined with your whining complaints that women won’t just roll over and say, “FUCK ME MRAL… I can’t go on if you won’t have sex with me”, and I’m not surprised you don’t get a second look.
I’ve turned women down. Not everyday, but a few times a year for all my sexually active life, and I’m not Brad Pitt, or Johnny Depp, or Cary Grant. I’m more the sort Cassandra says she goes for.
Bullshit.
How many of those do you think it would take to get past tiresome.
I know people who advertise for women… they get, “Hey baby… what you really need is some of my dick… you’ll be ruined for everyone after you get a taste of what I got to give you.”
They aren’t as honest as Holly was (she made the offer in the sure and certain knowledge that she could deliver what she promised, and that it was in the, general, realm of what you think you like).
Right… what the fuck would you know about that? How many of your friends are getting 10-20, of those a day in their inbox?
How many get demands, from strangers on the street, “Hey big boy, show me your meat!, just whip it out for me, come on! What’s the matter is it too small? Can’t you get it up for a real woman?”, etc.
You have no clue, but you think it must be swell.
This from a guy who complains he’s being spit on when women do respond to him, just not the way he wants.
I’m sure you’d be so much kinder to women who offered you unwanted attention.
Also, I personally receive at least 2-3 emails a week from guys I have absolutly no desire to fuck, usually very selfish propositions, often from married closeted guys. I’m bi. I actually like men. I guarantee you MRAL that I don’t feel validated or attractive from these emails. I feel objectified and I hate it and I”m pretty sure if I was getting 30-50 times that in a day, I would not be happy about it, which is how my girl friends feel about creeps who are messaging them non-stop on dating/kink sites.
Have to say keeping a lid on negativity is the best plan MRAL-the best friend used to get stood up (once a record 28 times in a row) and/or no second dates because he dumped all of his negative stuff out right away.
He held off for a couple of dates and low and behold-two girlfriends in a row. Granted the first one was a psycho she-beast who tried to drive us apart but…
@Shaenon – Yeah, I’ve worked in tech so I’ve met a lot of guys like Brandon. There’s nothing new or interesting about his brand of bullshit. I prefer my trolls to be deranged in unusual and entertaining ways.
@Cassandra: And you can’t see how you just objectified that NFL player? And you turn around and yell at men because we do the same to women You just completely dismissed a man because of physical appearance alone, yet it is some patriarchal oppressive system when men do it to women…nice going hypocrite.
BlackBloc, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. The positive validation these women get must be enormous. I almost understand where the monumental arrogance comes from.
I don’t do online dating, but I tried it once, and it was terrible. I sent a bunch of nice messages, and got maybe, oh 20-25% responses. I think this is pretty typical. I later got frustrated and started sending shorter messages to more women. Same rate of response. I’ve come to the conclusion that this whole “mass messaging” phenomenon is women’s fault- if these stuck-up princesses would deign to respond to friendly messages, there would be an incentive for men to make that effort. But they don’t.
The real problem is that these arrogant women make no distinction between a nice, thought-out message and a curt or rude one- what actually matters is if you physically make their ‘gina tingle. With this being so, why the hell should men waste their time with “friendliness”? It’s not reciprocated, and as said it’s a waste of their time. It’s a fucking meat market is what it is, with women as buyers (or rather, takers), so don’t expect men to send pointless “nice thought-out messages” when you almost certainly won’t get a response- unless, of course, you make a ‘gina tingle, but that would have happened regardless of what type of message you sent. In my opinion dating sites are even worse than real life, as woman’s advantages and arrogance are magnified tenfold. At least personality counts worth a shit offline.
This is why curt/mass messages/sexually explicit crap is so common- the goal is just to reach as many women as possible. Since the message itself doesn’t matter, well, why think it through?
@Cassandra: Also, it isn’t trolling when someone just disagrees with you or you don’t like what they have to say.
Please explain, Brandon. I’m sure that your explanation of how not wanting to have sex with/date a man who is not your type is objectification.
(Offers popcorn to everyone else)
In the game of “Brandon: Evil or Stupid”, I used to have my money on Evil but this last post means I have to make my next play on Stupid.
Learn to understand what “objectification” means, Brandon.
Pecunium – In fairness, you do need to add in that being nice to women does not work instantly and it doesn’t eliminate compatibility issues. I’ve seen some guys get a bit “I spent a whole month not making rape jokes and I didn’t get laid, niceness is bullshit” about it.
It’s important to be clear this is a general strategy to improve your overall odds (and massively improve your time while you’re single), not yet another type of token for the vending machine.
Also, I’ve never yelled at a man for not wanting to have sex with a woman who’s not his type. It helps, when having this sort of conversation, to remember that “a woman I am talking to” is not the same thing as “some other woman who said something once”.
@Cassandra: Well don’t whine when men say “fat girls” aren’t their type.
Okay, Brandon, you’re either deliberately misunderstanding the whole objectification thing for the purpose of being annoying, or you’re incredibly thick. I’m kinda with Blackbloc here, those are the only options left at this point.
Again, Brandon, you really need to work on that thing where you assume that if a woman says something she is speaking on behalf of all women.
Still waiting on the explanation of why turning down a proposition from a man who’s not your type is objectification, btw.
Cassandra vs. Brandon… to the pain!
Brandon: Is clueless the new black?
First, that’s not objectification.
Second… the issue isn’t “X girls aren’t my type”, but the double standard of, “Fat girls aren’t my type, but women shouldn’t get to turn me down for not being her type.”
Holly: If I implied that being a decent person = all the sex on can ask for… I’m sorry.
I was trying to make the comparison between, Asshole = can’t get sex, and non-asshole = can get sex.
Eh, I’m supposed to be working on an article, I don’t have time right now to illustrate the eleventy billion ways in which Brandon is wrong about sex and dating. And gender relations. And economics.
All of mainstream culture: “Those cows aren’t even people, they’re disgusting undateable blobs of fat and they have no value to society.”
Brandon: “That seems reasonable.”
Cassandra: “Muscle boys just aren’t my type.”
Brandon: “Oppression!”