The most common “critique” of the #mencallmethings hashtag that blew up on Twitter last week was that the women posting examples of misogynistic shit they got called online were making a big deal out of nothing. As the always-charming Ferdinand Bardamu so memorably put it:
It’s funny, then, that when MRAs find themselves described with less-than-flattering language they have a strange tendency to act like they’ve suddenly been struck with a case of the vapors. Witness the reaction of MRAs when someone calls them the “c-word.” No, not “cunt” – “creep.” As one outraged Men’s Rights Redditor recently put it, in a comment with 30+ net upvotes:
Creep shaming is probably one of the most insidious and anti-equality things you can do. The ability to label men as “creepy” is just one privilege that women enjoy, and a constant source of fear of ostracizing that all men must fear in our society.
When MRAs feel themselves being oppressed by such clearly man-hating language, they often refer to something called the Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics, which, well, catalogues their language grievances in detail. According to the author of the Catalogue,
Shaming tactics are emotional devices meant to play on a man’s insecurities and shut down debate. They are meant to elicit sympathy for women and to demonize men who ask hard questions. Most, if not all, shaming tactics are basically ad homimem attacks.
Such shaming tactics, the author of the Catalogue says, with no evident awareness of the irony, are often used by “histrionic … female detractors who refuse to argue their points with logic” and the male “gynocentrists” who ally with them.
Here are some of the awful “shaming” remarks that get directed at MRAs, according to the Catalogue of Shaming Tactics:
“Stop whining!”
“Suck it up like a man!”
“You need to get over your anger at women.”
“You’re afraid of a strong woman!”
“You are so immature!”
“You are just bitter because you can’t get laid.”
“Are you gay?”
“That’s a sexist stereotype!”
“You need therapy.”
“You make me feel afraid.”
“Weirdo!”
“Loser!”
“You are so materialistic.”
“No woman will marry you with that attitude.”
“You are insensitive to the plight of women.”
Is that last one even an insult? It’s a fairly accurate description of a lot of MRAs, who take a certain pride in being “insensitive to the plight of women.”
So now that we’ve seen the horrible abuse that MRAs have to put up with on a daily basis, let’s take a quick look at some of the things that women and feminists regularly get from their detractors, as posted to the #mencallmethings hashtag and sent to Sady Doyle, who originated the hashtag. (These are all taken from a great post she did in the aftermath of #mencallmethings’ big blowup.) I think you will find the comparison instructive. Let’s start with the more straightforward slurs. (TRIGGER WARNING for, well, just about everything in the quotes that follow.)
Slut, cunt, bitch, whore, ugly, dyke, lesbo, unfuckable, crazy, delusional, liar, hysterical, autistic bitch child, feminazi, ballbuster, humorless, heartless whore, man hater, misandrist, stupid little girl, shrieky hysterical moron, airhead, spoiled little princess, stupid bitch, stupid fucking cunt, stupid feminazi cunt, an ugly bitter little woman, cumm guzzling closet lesbian, a pseudo-intellectual Insane Oversensitive Humourless Female supremacist.
Now let’s move on to complete sentences:
“You’re an ugly fucking cunt.”
“That sort of smirk is why God invented anal sex.”
“you’re so ugly you look like you have downs syndrome, you’d be thankful to be raped.”
“hope you catch a sexually transmitted disease or vagina cancer, cuntwit.”
”Stick a dildo up your dry vagina.”
“the only time your mouth should be open is when i’m putting my d–k in it”
“Your just a gay cunt who deserves to be punished.”
“A firm backhand to her whore face would provide her with a much needed attitude adjustment.”
“Fuck you bitch….ya need to get beat like ur pops use to do to u.”
“I hope you never have children, your daughters would be such sluts and end up murdered in a gutter by someone like me.”
You’re “not worth the effort to murder.”
“[The] only tragedy is that a bullet didn’t rip through ur brainstem after u were used 4 ur 1 & only purpose in this world.”
“what a long winded bitch. You certainly do need to be gagged.”
“You’re an annoying bitch with no friends.I’d love to run you over with my truck.”
“you stupid bitch, I should fuck the crazy right out of you.”
”i surely hope that one day you get raped.”
“[You] can’t be a female scientist, that phrase is an oxymoron,”
“it’s painfully obvious you’re a woman, get off the internet.”
“I will fuck your ass to death you filthy fucking whore. Your only worth on this planet is as a warm hole.”
“Do you need to file a hurt feelings report?”
As I noted before, despite my general unpopularity in the MRA world, I tend to get fewer of these things than, for example, most feminist bloggers with a similar degree of internet notoriety. But I get them. Here, for example, is the latest comment I’ve gotten from the guy who calls himself Nugganu, a sort of follow-up to a previous comment I quoted earlier in which he imagined me raped by ten black men:
He certainly does have a vivid imagination.
But, yeah, somehow it’s a little hard for me to feel a ton of sympathy for MRAs who so regularly work themselves into a lather over “shaming language” like “creep” and “loser” and “you are insensitive to the plight of women.”
“if nebody approached me I’d be worried… and on a dark road all alone, 50 yards away ppl know you’re male? xD”
Ami has a point. In that kind of situation my mind would skip straight to “zombie that’s going to eat me, forget the gender!”
“Anyway, what’s the difference between the bloodthirsty parts of the Gita and the bloodthirsty parts of the Qu’ran? I mean, apart from the fact that you’re willing to look beyond the first.”
Hi Voip! You’ve failed to provide me with the chapter and verse number in the Gita where it says “its ok to kill billions of people as long as you think about God while doing it” even though you said its in there somewhere. Please provide chapter and verse number so I can look that up for myself. Thanks in advance.
Me,
“You can’t. You have failed over and over again to do anything but make shrill accusations of “racism” where there is absolutely zero proof of such.”
Ruttee,
“You mean like when I pointed out your utter lack of knowledge of Islam in Southeast Asia, where it has primarily spread through traders, after you asserted that Islam is only capable of spreading through violence?”
Sigh. You’re really bad at this.
1. I NEVER stated that Islam was only capable of spreading though violence. And …
2. What does any of this have to do with RACE, you dullard??? Islam is NOT a race, it is a religion and ideology. Nowhere in any of my comments did I say I have anything for or against any race of people. My issue is with the problematic aspects of the Islamic ideology. What about that don’t you understand? How much clearer can I possibly be?
“Your reaction was to pretend that they, too, were converted by the sword despite this being demonstrably not hte case. I’m not wasting my time treating a moron like you to any serious conversation.”
Pretend, my ass! When I pointed out to you that LONG BEFORE Islam made inroads into South and Southeast Asia, those regions had THEIR OWN INDIGENOUS religions, cultures, traditions, philosophies, ideologies, and forms of art, literature, etc.
To which you LAUGHED and accused me of being again “stupid”. Stupid for what? Knowing that South and Southeast Asia had THEIR OWN NATIVE cultures and religions BEFORE Islam. Or doesn’t that count because any period before Islamic onset is considered “the age of darkness”?
So what is it Ruttee – you think that before Islam came on the scene that South and Southeast Asians were blank slates without any culture whatsoever?
Who’s being racist here? And moreover, who’s showing their lack of world history knowledge?
But what can I expect? You also tried to convince me that Sikhs had a diaspora before Hindus. Remember that comment Ruttee – “at least Sikhs had a diaspora”.
Hmmm……
“I think NC4OM needs her own book, actually. It can start with “yoga classes intended to tone your ass are a religious practise”.
Who said that Hinduism is a “religion”? Certainly not me.
.
Sigh. I can’t believe I’m answering this, but:
No. It’s not the job of you, me, or any other non-Muslim to come in and declare “Your beliefs are stupid and old-fashioned and I know way better than you so here, I’ll tell you what you should believe.”
@NWOSlave:
Usury isn’t the same thing as fractional banking. Also, the prohibition against usury isn’t one of the Five Pillars, but rather usury is one of the Seven Heinous Sins of Islam.
You haven’t actually read the Gita, have you?
That is, at best, a lie of ommission. You behaved as though they spread only through violence, and then when called on it, whined and complained that you didn’t outright STATE your strongly implied point.
The shallow dodge of the bigot. You know that you can criticize an ideology, and you use this fact to criticize a race; You’ve done it before, and you’ll keep doing it, especially when you try to talk about just how hyperpatriarchal every muslim evar is.
You said you were so sorry that their indigenous religions were destroyed by Islam, and behaved as though they didn’t, you know, convert themselves, of their own free will. Islam *IS* part of their cultures, their philosophies, etc.
???
Oh, right, you still think I’m a muslim. Which is still the most hilarious troll assumption I’ve gotten ever, btw.
Yeah, considering that Hinduism hasn’t really lost its majority status in the place of its birth, that sort of mean it really never has had a diaspora. By default, the Sikhs would have been first, in comparison.
Katz: So far… no one has chimed in to support NC4OM’s position. Strange.
I see you’ve moved from religion to “philosophical belief system,” but either way, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes freedom of religion and belief, so making other people change their belief system to conform with human rights is a contradiction in terms.
If, on the other hand, you just wish they’d spontaneously all update feminize themselves, I too wish everyone would suddenly decide they agreed with me about everything. (Or would I? O.o)
Some of the awesomest, most feminist women I know are Muslim. One of them will be my sister in law (once she finally gets to put the MD after her name). Her mother is a birth control educator in Africa and parts of Asia.
“You haven’t actually read the Gita, have you?”
Several times. In Sanskrit. Again, chapter and verse number pretty please?
“The shallow dodge of the bigot. You know that you can criticize an ideology, and you use this fact to criticize a race”
— PROOF?
“You’ve done it before”
— EVIDENCE?
“You said you were so sorry that their indigenous religions were destroyed by Islam, and behaved as though they didn’t, you know, convert themselves, of their own free will. Islam *IS* part of their cultures, their philosophies, etc.”
— Do you know what “imperialism” and “hegemony” mean? Do you realize they can be spread without the use of a sword? Remember Ruttee, I’m a South Asian and I know my stuff. You’re out of you’re league trying to discuss Islam in South and Southeast Asia with me, but at least you can read up on it.
“Yeah, considering that Hinduism hasn’t really lost its majority status in the place of its birth, that sort of mean it really never has had a diaspora. By default, the Sikhs would have been first, in comparison.”
— I’ve asked you this before and of course you either ignored it or failed to answer, because again, you simply could not, but I’ll ask again:
Please provide me some proof and a timeline for this Sikh diaspora that set out from India before, and in greater numbers than, Hindus.
I’m waiting.
🙂
PERCUNIUM and KATZ, then I disagree with you. I’m still (somewhat) young but in outlook I’d probably be considered “old school Feminist” because I think “consciousness raising” is still important. I have influenced a few of my own female family members to give up Islam solely on Feminist grounds. You see, when you are raised in an ideology from birth you don’t really have a “choice” in the matter, you are conditioned by your family and surrounding environment to automaticallly go along with things without questioning. Its good to get an outside perspective and to start questioning, which is what I did, and what I help my relatives do.
There’s no question of “force” in this – simply exposing people to new ideas – consciousness raising, as they used to say. They are free to disagree with me, no biggie. But 3 of my female family members have agreed with me and they choose to leave Islam, as opposed to staying and working within to change it. A few of my male family members are trying to work within to change it.
CASSANDRA and PERCUNIUM,
Get over it! One of you qouted the other in a comment and that’s why I addressed the other. My bad. Move on already.
Hi Voip! You’ve failed to provide me with the chapter and verse number in the Gita where it says “its ok to kill billions of people as long as you think about God while doing it” even though you said its in there somewhere.
Do you have a problem with reading for comprehension?
Hi, NC4OM! The entirety of Book 1 describes Arjuna’s despair at the battle that is about to take place, because he doesn’t want to kill his relatives or old friends. Considering that’s practically the entire book, prooftexting is pretty dumb here, but this part spells it out:
In response, Krishna says:
But why is this OK? Won’t Arjuna accrue terrible karma if he goes against the ksatriya-dharma, the code of ethics for the warrior caste, like this? He is, after all, preparing not only to kill his relatives but to usher in a war that will lead to the death of every kshatriya on the planet except for four people.
Not according to Krishna! In the first place,
(He’s conveniently forgetting that this war isn’t lawful, according to their code.)
In the second place, one may avoid the ill effects of bad karma through devotion to Krishna:
That’s the central ethical teaching of the entire work. You’re either trolling, or you are not as familiar with Hindu traditions as you claim to be, or you are not very bright.
(All quotes The Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata. Tr. J. A. B. van Buitenen. London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981.)
If that wasn’t enough, you’re welcome to discuss the Sauptikaparvan with me as well, in which a camp full of sleeping soldiers are murdered For Great Justice.
Is this like how we can pretend that the existence of the caste system is irrelevant to discussions of Hinduism, because woo says that we can just ignore the bits of a religion that we don’t like?
(Except in the case is Islam, which cannot be cherry-picked in the same way because it’s inherently evil.)
I see. Obviously people from religious families are brainwashed imbeciles and they just need you to bathe their tiny little minds with your intellectual radiance.
Just to forestall the inevitable: I’m not trying to claim that Hindu religious texts are uniquely violent. They’re not. My point is that every tradition has its problematic parts, which don’t need to be taken literally and usually aren’t. (Gandhi was inspired in his nonviolence by the Gita, for instance.) Meanwhile, in context it’s possible to read the end of the Mahabharata as an ironic critique of the war-mongering in the middle.
The bloodthirsty parts of the Gita no more necessarily make you a bad person than the bloodthirsty parts of the Qu’ran necessarily mean Islam is uniquely monstrous.
You must be a real hit at parties.
As long as it’s our religion. If it’s the religion of The Other, then cherry-pick away.
In the last thread where we talked about this I pointed out that Buddhism is directly responsible for the creation of an underclass in Japan (Google “burakumin” for more info). All religions contain some questionable ideas, and all of them can be implemented in oppressive ways. This is because religions are created, spread, and maintained by people, and human beings as a group are prone to all kinds of nastiness towards each other. It’s not unique to Islam.
Given that NC4OM thinks s/he’s overflowing with generous benevolence by briefly stifling his/her contempt for religion when around religious people s/he particularly likes, I’m betting s/he pesters his/her family nonstop with atheist talking points, perhaps to the point where people are willing to convert to shut him/her up (really, imagine being around him/her constantly IRL).
Which makes me want to give a tip of the hat to our atheist regulars, because you guys are cool and have yet to try to talk me out of being a Christian even though I’m clearly a thrall of an outdated, patriarchal system.
???
NC4OM is an obnoxious Hindu, not an obnoxious atheist. She used to post as HINDU and Societal Contract. (Under the second name, I think, she got banned for racism.)
VOIP, first you said that the Gita says, “its ok to kill billions of people as long as you think about God while doing it” and then you pull out quotes wherein Krishna is encouraging a warrior to fight OTHER WARRIORS on a specific, pre-determined battlefield, at a specific pre-determined time.
Nowhere in the Gita will you see any verse telling Arjuna to kill civilians or “non-believers” in his religion, destroy their places of worship, make their women their slaves and concubines, etc.
You are comparing mangos to mutton, literally.
Since you read the Mahabharata then you know how the Pandavas avoided going to war at all costs, despite having had many injustices visited upon them, including the killings of youths. Finally, when the unsolicited violence reached tipping point, the warriors decided, OK, lets do this the dharmic way and declare an official war where ONLY warriors will battle it out.
This is an entirely different scenario than telling your co-religionists that they must slay kafr wherever they find them and that the spoils (women) are their’s to do with as they please, unless of course they convert to your religion, then you have to treat them as humans.
And it must be pointed out that even being a warrior and trained in weaponry and killing, STILL Arjuna is RELUNCTANT to engage in a pre-determined war with male warriors of equal caliber at a specific time and place for such a battle.
“The bloodthirsty parts of the Gita no more necessarily make you a bad person than the bloodthirsty parts of the Qu’ran necessarily mean Islam is uniquely monstrous.”
— I would reword that “The bloodthirsty parts of the Gita no more necessarily make you a bad person than the bloodthirsty parts of the Qu’ran necessarily mean that every individual Muslim is a bad person”.
Cassandra,
“Is this like how we can pretend that the existence of the caste system is irrelevant to discussions of Hinduism, because woo says that we can just ignore the bits of a religion that we don’t like?
(Except in the case is Islam, which cannot be cherry-picked in the same way because it’s inherently evil.)
— I’ve covered this before Love. My view is that Islam absolutely can and SHOULD be cherry picked. Someone questioned why. Maybe that was you? Really? Does one even have to question “why” Islam should be cherry picked? Come on now.
Voip,
“As long as it’s our religion. If it’s the religion of The Other, then cherry-pick away.”
See above. You are assuming the opposite of what Cass is assuming.
You know by now, after reading all my comments that I believe in equal oppurtunity cherry picking.
😉
VoiP: True; I remembered this shortly after I posted that. Of course s/he also doesn’t think Hinduism is a religion. Point is his/her main concern is making other people stop being the religion they are.
“Point is his/her main concern is making other people stop being the religion they are.”
I’m actually more in favor of revising all of them in the areas where they need to be revised, Katz.
I haven’t caught up with this thread yet, but I’m getting really really tired of the Islam derails. So no more discussion of Islam on this blog for now. Or maybe ever. I haven’t decided. I’m pretty sure there are other places on the internet where Islam can be discussed, so anyone who wants to keep discussing it, go to one of those.
If people continue discussing it, they will go on moderation.
OK I’ll submit. But that means my question about this old and mysterious Sikh diaspora still stands.
😉
And Dave – recent pics?