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.
@ Improbably Joe – I really hate to get into this conversation on a blog as trolled as this one, because it can easily veer into victim blaming, but I studied some criminology at university and yes, predators look closely at body language when selecting victims. Which is why I keep saying that teaching little girls that they’re allowed to defend their personal space is one of the best things that we can do. If girls are raised that way it shows in their body language.
Oh, and not for nothing, but when I was in the Marines we always traveled in packs. Well, we called them ‘fire teams’ but the point is that we never went out without buddies to watch our backs and make sure no one cornered us and hurt us. We were trained to think of ourselves as the most badass of all badassitude… but we were also taught to rely on one another and never go into potentially dangerous situations alone. It seems to me that we should teach that, even before we start thinking about handgun training.
Quackers: The issue isn’t that a nutshot is a bad thing, it’s being ready to deal with it if it doesn’t work.
It’s also a thing many guys are ready for/reflexively defend against.
To tell a story. Marc and Oberon and I were taking a break at work (we were doing swing gang for a movie… Nancy Allen thing about the commodity market… not great, but it paid the bills), and we were talking about various things relating to interpersonal violence.
At the time I was wearing shitkickers (square-toed cowboy boots, scuffed from being used around the horses, and stained from manure, etc., you know; kicking shit), and I said I liked to slide a bit back, and raise my knee as if I were going to shoot a foot/knee to the groin, and the shoot the heel of my boot in a snap-kick to the knee.
Oberon nodded, and Marc said, “Damm, I forget what a nasty little bastard you can be”.
I still keep that in the repetoire, because it’s a thing that is harder to be prepped for, and doesn’t have a failure mode of delayed effect. If it works, the target falls down, and can’t chase you.
Turn tail and run.
As Marc said… the best defense is a rapid use of, “feet don’t fail me now.”
Or, as Skynard said, “give me three steps.”
These are words/ideas to live by.
ps…. feel free to compliment me… I don’t think you are acting skeevy.
Arks,
Or men who attack women could always, you know, not attack women.
Also acknowledging some physical weakness does not equal inferior. Some men are physically weaker than other men, should they stay home too or demand that a stronger man protect them? and mental preparedness and emotional control? your run of the mill thug is no kung fu master. And exactly how does being physically weaker justify not having any rights?
Obviously it didn’t work either, or feminism wouldn’t have happened. Spare me your conspiracy theories on it too. Notice also how women are actually becoming more physically aggressive too. In some ways it might start evening out the playing field a bit. MRAs hate it because women are no longer the docile, submissive things they can control. I find it funny too how you guys gloat that men are so much stronger, but are the first to point out how domestic violence is 50/50 and women harm men just as severely. So which is it? are men stronger or are women just as strong to inflict such severe harm?
Cassandra: How about when they aren’t so young anymore, and wear a braid?
I agree with the cop. Which is why I reccomend Marc’s book. Attitude matters, and one of the attitudes you need is to be willing to commit. If that is a bit evident, the odds of attack drop. If attacked, go all out, and then get out of they way.
The odds of being accused of “attack conversion” (i.e. moving from defender to attacker) are less for women, but not impossible, and being a woman doesn’t give one a license to make that shift.
But there is no reason to let the Arks of the world make you stay home in fear.
Look for a Model Mugging. If you want a contact, I have some in the Bay who will put you in touch with the people who do them.
Improbable Joe: @Arks
Are you kidding? You really can’t be serious, or that dumb.
He can be both. Really go back and look at the first comments he made in this thread. They aren’t any worse than his previous attempts to put us in our places.
@CassandraSays:
If nothing else, teaching young girls to defend their personal space is a positive thing regardless of any later benefits. Not to mention that if young boys got used to seeing it early, they might turn out better as well?
Not that he needs it, but I’m going to back up Pecunium on the nut shot thing – it’s debilitating, but there’s a definite window where he’s still dangerous.
Bit tangential, but touching on issues here…
I’m not the biggest fan of Steinem all told, but this excerpt from the great Little Women, Big Men, came to mind re: size and women’s role
itGloria Steinem wrote in Moving Beyond Words that pretty much everyone she had conversations with about gender equality believed that the oppression of women resulted from the physical size and strength differences between men and women. “Sooner or later, even the most intellectual discussion came down to men’s supposedly superior strength as a justification for inequality, whether the person arguing regretted or celebrated it.”
But size and strength differences don’t explain other forms of oppression, she points out. In fact, this ideology is conveniently flipped onto its head to justify the oppression of men who are bigger or stronger than their oppressors, such as blacks in apartheid South Africa, or working class men. “Oppression has no logic — just a self-fulfilling prophecy, justified by a self-perpetuating system,” Steinem writes.
http://www.saidit.org/archives/jun06/language.html
Whole essay above, and really worth a read. MRAL might even like it for it’s description of heightism among men, as long as he can conveniently ignore the point and say the author and people excerpted are whiny bitches making it all about FUCK themselves and how dare those ALPHA FUCKING GASHES talk about heightism like they CARE…
@CassandraSays
True true. It fits with what Improbable Joe mentioned too. Confident body language, making yourself look bigger, looking straight ahead or at other people rather than staring at the ground while you walk, makes you look less like a person who can be easily victimized. An attacker would probably be able to tell that you look like someone who would fight back.
@Pecunium
LOL. That is a pretty awesome story and good steps to live by 😀 I did watch some self defense videos awhile back too but all I can remember was the palm strike..
@ Joe – The boy I punched in the face, aged about 4 or 5, because he was bullying me and my Dad taught me how never harrassed me or any other girl again as far as I’m aware. So yes, it would be very instructive for boys too.
@Pecunium – Skinny and long hair is always a good thing in my book, though I’m not so fond of braids. Practical, but less pretty than wearing your hair down.
Cassandra: Hair is mutable. I am not so fond of letting my hair down with just anyone.
🙂
Also, no need for Model Mugging for me, since I learned to fight back as a child. It’s actually kind of weird how rarely people mess with me given how small I am, but a teacher did once tell me I was the most intimidating child she’d ever met, so…
Arks, leaving all of your other nonsense aside for a moment, are you aware that humans as a species aren’t even close to one million years old?
Some people have this bizarre idea that freedom of speech means that opinions can’t be criticized. A natural corollary of this view is that organized criticism of opinions is a call for suppression.
Maybe Arks is a creationist, and he meant Ark as in “belonging to Noah”.
You could always, you know.
Get a man to protect you.
Or stay at home.
Yeah, I know, it feels a little bit demeaning. But it works!
Given that the guy who assaulted me was my boyfriend at the time and we were in my home – and that this is an incredibly common model of rape – you are kind of an enormous idiot. Yeah, I know that feels a little bit demeaning. But it’s true!
I know exactly what you mean. Believe me, I’m just as tired as anyone else of the bodies stacking up on the left side of the aisle, Teabaggers showing up at political rallies packing heat, and the Right backing up their politics with the threat of violence. I don’t know if your idea is a good one, but I’m not the one to write it off.
physical weakness = justified oppression under the law and everywhere else is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard, even by MRA standards. I just….there are no words for the stupid. By that logic we’d have to take away rights from people with certain disabilities, the elderly, etc.
I hope he’s actually just trolling for the lulz, and not someone who actually believes what he is saying.
And now I’m wondering, if women really wanted to become physically stronger couldn’t they just take steroids or testosterone shots? there are actually ways of defeating biology.
What if the man you’re with can’t fight? My partners have ranged from a pacifist martial artist to a pacifist dude who could carry less than I do (and I am not a strong woman). This whole “get a man to defend you” plan has flaws.
Well, Quackers, there’s that pesky issue of side effects.
If steroids and testosterone could turn me into Super MegaFem, Feminist Super Hero, without ruining my body otherwise, why not?
Us lesbians are shit outta luck, huh Arks? (As is anyone who, I dunno, has a commute…)
Yea I know, but even so it could be done. Just look at female body builders, the ones that use steroids anyway.
Holly Pervocracy | November 8, 2011 at 8:57 pm
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!”
That’s my opinion too. I’m fine w/ gun ownership, but when ppl suggest it will protect women from violence and sexual assault… well besides acting as if attackers are wild animals again, there’s a number of issues with it. First of all, I’d have to be willing to kill a person. The person who raped me was v close to me, And for a while I blamed myself, and right after the fact I had trouble even coming to terms that he had done that to me. There’s no way I would have been able to grab a gun and shoot him at the time. And in general, I’m not a person who likes to harm others much less take a life which is permanent and you’d be (generic you, not Holly you) asking me and every other woman to make life and death decisions like that, (as Holly points out a lot of violence isn’t in an alley by some guy in a mask that we can easily see as a “us or them” situation) :
Secondly, I find it funny often when people tell us that guns would protect us and that women should have the right to shoot rapists… and then also complain about false rape accusations… cuz then in their world, tehre’d be a lot of dead men… and then it’d be whether or not you believe the woman is lying about the attempted rape… so either there’d be a ton of dead men and women getting off free (which somehow I don’t think is what they were wanting) or we’d have to prove that we were in danger of being raped and didn’t make it up or were in legitimate danger…. >_> And ppl alrdy doubt rape victims so much, imagine if you add a dead body to the mix. And it’d be “threat of rape” so there’d be even LESS evidence than now, cuz no way people are letting somebody rape them BEFORE shooting. -_-
Secondly, I find it funny often when people tell us that guns would protect us and that women should have the right to shoot rapists… and then also complain about false rape accusations… cuz then in their world, tehre’d be a lot of dead men… and then it’d be whether or not you believe the woman is lying about the attempted rape… so either there’d be a ton of dead men and women getting off free (which somehow I don’t think is what they were wanting) or we’d have to prove that we were in danger of being raped and didn’t make it up or were in legitimate danger…. >_> And ppl alrdy doubt rape victims so much, imagine if you add a dead body to the mix. And it’d be “threat of rape” so there’d be even LESS evidence than now, cuz no way people are letting somebody rape them BEFORE shooting. -_-
So much yes to this. When so much in the culture is about how women are emotional, women are vindictive, women are liars… the “helpful advice” of “GET A GUN” from many of those who offer it is clearly more a silencing tactic than practical advice they’d like to see implemented.
I think part of the general discourse around guns should be the fact that not everyone is comfortable using a gun and that not wanting to have a gun doesn’t mean it’s OK to assault someone.
Being ABLE to have guns is important for women so long as violent people out there have them, but I would never want that to be construed into a “you HAVE to have a gun or else you are asking for it” victim blamey situation.