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“Please Killl Yourselves”: MRAs respond to #mencallmethings

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.

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darksidecat
darksidecat
13 years ago

I often don’t respond to messages when I am not interested, then again, my two main ruling out response criteria invovle 1)misgendering me and 2) having clear indicators of transphobia/homophobia (and, in one case, being an open white supremecist) in their profile, so I feel it is warranted.

darksidecat
darksidecat
13 years ago

Just to add on, those limited criteria mean that I send extremely few responses. Like, single digits in total.

shaenon
13 years ago

what actually matters is if you physically make their ‘gina tingle.

What’s wrong with that? Would you really want to date someone who found you physically unappealing? Why?

Trust me, it would make you feel awful, especially given the body issues you already have. Please only date people who get ‘gina tingles from you.

Dracula
Dracula
13 years ago

Gods am I ever sick of reading the phrase ” ‘gina tingles.”

Men's RIghts Activist Lieutenant
Men's RIghts Activist Lieutenant
13 years ago

Yeah, but then we’re back to the original problem that 80% of women’s ‘ginas tingle for only 20% of men.

Xanthe
Xanthe
13 years ago

Gina Tingle sounds like it should be someone’s porn star name.

Magpie
Magpie
13 years ago

Holly – I crossed a line saying that, ay. Sorry.

Years ago I met a young bloke a bit like MRAL. The thought crossed my mind “What he needs is a root”, but I wasn’t going to be the one to do it, for the same reasons you described.

Maybe he’ll translate an offer he didn’t want to accept to women he makes offers to, more likely he’ll take it as evidence that women are mucking him about. 🙁

Magpie
Magpie
13 years ago

Gina tingles always makes me think of these:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/94/243502960_06b075897b.jpg

‘fizzy, fuzzy, gina tingles’

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
13 years ago

I kind of like that term, actually, just in that it cuts right through all the “we don’t hate women and fear their sexuality, really, honest” bullshit and reveals exactly how the people who use it really think. It perfectly expresses the fact that they feel offended by the notion of women having sexual desires of our own at all.

Dracula
Dracula
13 years ago

Yeah, it certainly does evoke the kind of juvenile, spiteful shaming it’s intended to. It just happens to gross me out for that very reason. It makes very uncomfortable to imagine people who hate women and their bodies so much trying have sex with said women.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
13 years ago

I guess from a woman’s perspective I’m kind of going, hey, if a man has that attitude then the sooner he makes that clear the better, so that I can avoid him. Saying “gina tingles” is like putting a giant blinking emergency light on top of your head – Danger Will Robinson, here be dragons, etc.

Dracula
Dracula
13 years ago

I just imagine these guys are a lot more free with the term on the internet than in person. Thinking about the possibility of someone attempting to have sex with me while trying to hide a seething resentment of my genitals’ ability to be aroused by other people seriously creeps me out.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
13 years ago

If it’s any comfort, I don’t imagine that most of them get the opportunity to indulge in that particular form of cognitive dissonance very often.

Dracula
Dracula
13 years ago

Perhaps not.

Xanthe
Xanthe
13 years ago

I now return you to the program in progress, the Mr. Al Show. You might think it’s a new episode, but it really, really is not.

I haven’t caught the re-runs before, but it looks totally predictable. The plot twists are all telegraphed in advance and disappointingly obvious, the characterisation is lame and one-dimensional, the sets are creaky, the dialogue abysmal, and the actors are more wooden than my mahogany desk.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
13 years ago

Well, the MRAL show is more interesting than the Brandon show, if only in that The Brandon Show is basically “open scene – the lunchroom, any tech company”.

katz
13 years ago

I thought it was “open scene–cracked bedroom closet door.”

shaenon
13 years ago

Yeah, but then we’re back to the original problem that 80% of women’s ‘ginas tingle for only 20% of men.

Again–not a real thing. Exists in your head. Not real.

I know it sounds like I’m beating a dead horse here, but I have problems with depression, serious problems, and it’s taken me a long time to learn how to separate “this is a real concern, and it has real solutions” from “this is a collection of paranoid fantasies, exaggerations, projections, and worst-case scenarios that my brain creates to stop me from doing anything useful.” I advise you to learn this skill sooner rather than later. You will avoid wasting a lot of time.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
13 years ago

Do you think it would help if we all posted pics of the men we find hottest and the other commenters chimed in with “no, doesn’t do it for me – for me it would have to be X”, and then yet more commenters weighed in with “no actually he does nothing for me, I like men like…”? Because MRAL really seems fixated on this idea that there are a small number of men who are attractive to all women, and most other men are attractive to no women at all. Maybe seeing how widely women’s tastes actually range would shock some sense into him.

shaenon
13 years ago

The MRAL Show is fun until he starts liking us a little too much for his comfort, at which point he goes back to calling us some variation on “bitch.” That’s every damn sweeps week.

shaenon
13 years ago

Because MRAL really seems fixated on this idea that there are a small number of men who are attractive to all women, and most other men are attractive to no women at all. Maybe seeing how widely women’s tastes actually range would shock some sense into him.

That was tried earlier in this very thread. The result: Brandon got mad at women for having any preferences at all. MRAs are really just upset that women exist independently of men.

We’ve tried it in the past with MRAL, too. His usual response is either that women who aren’t holding out for Brad Pitt (it’s always Brad Pitt) are very rare cases and not worth his consideration, or that unconventionally attractive guys who get girlfriends are secretly alphas in some other way. That was where we learned the phrase “facial alpha,” one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen on this blog.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
13 years ago

But I don’t like blonds…no one ever told me that that wasn’t allowed. I suppose I could approximate a “gina tingle” feeling by watching a Brad Pitt movie and rubbing some tiger balm on…you know…but that doesn’t seem like very much fun.

Also, “facial alpha”? Please share.

Wetherby
Wetherby
13 years ago

I’m fascinated by MRAL’s use of the phrase “‘gina tingle”, because it reveals so much about his general attitude – and, by extension, just why he has so much difficulty getting a date.

He initially used it twice in one post, which produced a response that could best be characterized as “strongly negative”. Many responded to the overall sentiment (and the delusions that underpinned it), but quite a few people zeroed in on the phrase “‘gina tingle”, saying that they hated the phrase, that it essentially betrayed that MRAL was only interested in women’s genitals (almost certainly true), and that he had a problem with the notion that women might feel sexual desire (again, almost certainly true).

So how does MRAL respond? Does he apologize, acknowledge that his language might have been inappropriate, or that it maybe sent out the wrong message? No, he says this:

Yeah, but then we’re back to the original problem that 80% of women’s ‘ginas tingle for only 20% of men.

Aside from the fact that this is the kind of sweeping and hugely contentious claim that’s just begging for a “citation please” response, the way he’s worded it essentially shows the finger to the vast majority of people who responded to his original post. And to no useful effect whatever, as the discussion of the phrase “‘gina tingles” then turned to outright mockery, capped by CassandraSays’ beautifully-observed summation:

Saying “gina tingles” is like putting a giant blinking emergency light on top of your head – Danger Will Robinson, here be dragons, etc.

I think that’s true anyway, but repeating it after pretty much everyone has expressed their dislike for the phrase also says “I am an arrogant and insensitive jerk – please give me the widest possible berth”. He’s either ignored pretty much everyone who responded to his post, or he deliberately decided to annoy them, knowing that they’d be annoyed. Either way, that’s showing serious disrespect, and if his behavior in real life is anywhere close to that… well, that goes a very long way towards explaining why he’s a virgin who has trouble getting dates.

Respecting the feelings of the people you’re having a conversation with has got nothing to do with political correctness, or bending the knee to the gynofascist dictatorship – it’s simple politeness. And simple politeness can get you a very long way – or at least far enough for you to get to second base, and possibly further.

A case in point: I met my wife face to face after a fortnight of emailing and phoning, so we already knew that we had enough in common to have a good time together, but we had no idea whether or not we’d be physically attracted (we deliberately didn’t send photos). As it turned out, while we weren’t actively repelled by each other, neither of us thought “Wow, this is the one for sure!”. We spent several hours together, had a great time purely as friends, and then decided that because we didn’t find each other completely repulsive and we were mature and well-adjusted adults who hadn’t had sex in a few weeks, we might as well spend the night together as well. And that’s when we discovered that we were compatible to a degree that neither of us had ever encountered before. (I nearly added “or since”, but we haven’t slept with anyone else since: there’s no need to).

Now I reckon that would be pretty close to the ideal scenario for MRAL to encounter – but it just ain’t gonna happen with his current attitude. In fact, from the kind of things he’s been saying, I’m willing to bet that he’d turn up at the café rendezvous, peek round the door, decide “no thanks”, and leave without even saying hi. And if I’d done that, my life over the past decade would have been unimaginably different.

red_locker
13 years ago

“Do you think it would help if we all posted pics of the men we find hottest and the other commenters chimed in with “no, doesn’t do it for me – for me it would have to be X”, and then yet more commenters weighed in with “no actually he does nothing for me, I like men like…”? Because MRAL really seems fixated on this idea that there are a small number of men who are attractive to all women, and most other men are attractive to no women at all. Maybe seeing how widely women’s tastes actually range would shock some sense into him.”

Didn’t we already try that on the forums? I think he basically ignored it.

red_locker
13 years ago

…And that’s what I get for not reading the whole thread, for Shaenon pretty much said a similar thing.