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.
@Cassandra: Well, I have no problems dating, meeting women, saving money or investing. So I can’t be that wrong when I am earning a return on my money and getting laid.
Can we have MRAL back? I’m bored with Brandon already.
Seriously, Brandon, the gap between the impression that you clearly hope that you’re making and the grim reality makes the Pacific look like the merest trickle.
LOL, now he’s mad at me.Sorry, sweetie, the fact that you’re able to find a few women with bad taste in men who’re willing to date you doesn’t mean that you’re Right About Everything.
Cassandra, you forgot contracts, and the legal benefits of marriage.
I’m still waiting for the video evidence of Ashley’s existence.
@Cassandra: Ya, not mad at all. But thanks for insulting my girlfriend.
@Wetherby – notice how he still hasn’t explained why not wanting to fuck someone you’re not attracted to is objectification? This seems to be Brandon’s one and only tactic.
Everyone – Please explain why you think you’re right about x,y,and z.
Brandon – Well, I can get laid! Ashley gets on her knees for me, so I win!
@Bostonian: Be careful what you wish for, since it’s Brandon that video might be XXX-rated.
Since it is Brandon, I’m sure it would be. I’m willing to take that chance, since I am also an Ashnostic.
The thing is that it doesn’t matter whether or not Ashley exists because, as I said, women who have horrible taste in men exist, as do women with low self-esteem. I can totally believe that a woman who’s messed up enough to want to date Brandon exists, and that her name is Ashley. That doesn’t mean make his silly, boring ideas about sex and dating correct.
Cassandra: Nor does his having a job, and some money invested in, presently, profitable ways, mean he understand economics.
Nor that he’s got a credit card means he understands contracts, etc..
Yes, I’m sure you get lots of positive validation from “will you let me mt my nutz inside you?”
Of course you have.
See, because I’m not a moron, my thought process is “If I’m not going to get a positive response anyway, I will stop wasting my time altogether“, not “I will harrass people just because”.
You have no earthly idea what internet dating is like. At all. And as usual, you have no idea what a woman might actually be looking for. I’m saying this as someone who found her lover online; you’re fucking clueless. We were attracted to each other’s minds well before physical attraction played into it.
This response is par for the course for you: Completely idiotic. If they actually thought it was a waste of their time, they are grossly stupid to continue wasting their time. More likely, they are just lazy and think their form letter is sufficient.
I have a job and a few investments, and I’m a journalist. Someone give me a column in The Economist, stat. I mean, since I’ m financially solvent that makes me qualified to write about economics, right?
Exaclty: I’m semi-retired (and if I lived in someplace less expensive, or had more moderate tastes I could be completely retired) and have been since I was about 42. Ergo I must be a whiz at economics. The actual theories, and the math, and the analytic regressions… irrelevant.
Again with the “gina tingles”. MRAL, here is a simple question – why do you find the fact that women select the men they’re going to have sex with based in part on whether or not they actually find those men physically attractive so shocking and offensive? Do you not filter the women who you yourself want to have sex with by looks at all? If you do, why do you believe that women should act differently?
You know, I still utterly fail to understand why MRAL insists that women wanting to have sex with people that they actually find sexually arousing and not wanting to sex with those they don’t is somehow unreasonable.
MRAL, since you are afraid of vulvas, you have no business messaging people who have them in the first place.
I has been ninja’d.
Maybe it’s a sign of my arrogance or whatever, but I don’t want people who aren’t attracted to me to fake it and date me anyway. That’s going to be unpleasant for both of us.
HA, Brandon would think that’s objectification. Protip, it’s not.
MRAL, why can you have standards (i.e., no fat chicks), but women can’t?
Me neither, Holly. That doesn’t sound like fun for anyone involved. In fact, the MRAL version of sex sounds absolutely miserable for everyone involved.
“what actually matters is if you physically make their ‘gina tingle.”
I suppose that pursuing dates with girls who make your weenie wiggle is bad as well…
Kirby, I thought we already named them “peen pangs” in another MRAL thread about this very same thing.
MRAL, I’m a woman, and a 25% message return rate on online dating ain’t bad. You can’t put everything about yourself into those profiles, so it’s entirely possibly that the person who checks out your profile noticed that you like X a lot, and she can’t stand X. I’ve done that. I’ve not bothered to message Randians because I know we won’t get along at a fundamental level. I don’t owe them a message in return, especially since that’s just an invitation to a conversation I don’t want to have. I’ve also messaged plenty of people who haven’t responded, but that’s cool, too. These are things that happen to everyone who dates.
MRAL, I briefly tried online dating. It got too time-consuming and annoying quickly, so I stopped, but while I was trying it my judging process for potential dudes who emailed me went like this:
1) Is the entire thing in txt spk and mispeld all to hell (or anything overtly offensive)? Fail, do not continue.
2) Is there anything witty or even just specific to my profile? If so, continue to step 3.
3) What is the actual content of the email, and am I intrigued? If it’s awesome, respond immediately, if it’s kinda meh but okay respond later.
That’s it. Seriously. I also would read their interests/etc., but I never even looked at their photos when considering whether to respond or not; I only tried to find out what they looked like right before meeting for coffee because I wanted to be able to recognize them. That is because for me having nothing to talk about on a date is way more of a dealbreaker than their looks, ’cause I was planning on chatting over coffee rather than fucking over coffee, although for an actual developing sexual relationship looks would then become more important obviously.
Other women have other priorities than I do. We’re not a hivemind. And frankly, you should probably follow my example and practice just having a reasonable conversation with a woman before worrying about how insanely hot she it; even if she’s not your type, getting coffee with her won’t actually kill you, and at worst you’ll have a fun chat with someone who has a vulva in a non-terrifying VAGINA DENTATA situation and you will be able to calm the fuck down around girls before trying to actually attract one you want to sleep with as well as hang out with.