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.”
NWOslave, are you an Islamophile?
Well, “just ignore it” can work to a certain extent in families because the bonds are strong enough that, no matter how much Relative X annoys you when they do Y, they are still a relative and you still love them. So you tolerate a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t from anyone else. This is not how political movements work.
NWO is a strict pedophile. He hates everything else.
Please note that he does not actually like kids either, he just wants to rape them.
ya see, that’s why I don’t post much… I can’t quite get the right words to get my thoughts out in a coherent and concise manner. CassandraSays said it better XD
@Kate: “Agree to disagree” is sometimes the best we can do. And sometimes “let me take you aside privately and talk to you” is a possibility versus “let’s derail every conversation every time someone diverges slightly from the perfect position, and drum them out of the group as fast as we can.”
“Say you’re on a dark road all alone with a flat tire and no cell phone. And a guy like me pulls over about 50 yards away and starts walking towards you. You’ll probably start to feel pretty darned scared. Of course when I finally get there and offer to give you a hand, maybe you’ll realize you’ve been indoctrinated to fear and hate men. What you should’ve been thinking was, “Thank God a man is here to help!”
Her reaction could be because of all the spooky movies she saw as a kid and the “be safe” “dont talk to strangers” conditioning and the fact that when a woman is raped, 99.99999999999999% of the time, its by a male.
For that matter, even if I were a man, if it were night, dark, isolated and a stranger was approaching me, I would be spooked at first too. Duh.
Crazy killers do exist, you know.
I kind of suspect that NWOs basic underlying problem is that there’s no warmth or happiness of any kind in his life. He’s too hateful for anyone to be affectionate towards, and that’s just fuelling his hatred of everything in a sort of feedback loop.
Notice how he gets really mad every time commenters express empathy/warmth/affection towards each other? I think that hits a sore spot for him.
“Keep fucking that chicken” is a phrase from the Daily Show. It’s a sarcastic “keep up the good work”. In this case, it means “keep digging that hole”.
@No Cuntry 4 Old Men!
“MRA and Islam are bedfellows for a reason (pun intended).”
Holy crap Dave! She said something bad about a faith other than Christianity.
Damn it, No Cuntry 4 Old Men!. We only endorse Christian bashing around these parts.
Saying all Christians are two-faced, murdering, fork-tongued, pedophile, women raping, steaming piles of horse shit, is quite acceptable. But ya gotta tippytoe around all other faiths, damn it!
Well, it’s originally from this, not the Daily Show.
But Jon Stewart was the one who made it a meme.
“Well, “just ignore it” can work to a certain extent in families because the bonds are strong enough that, no matter how much Relative X annoys you when they do Y, they are still a relative and you still love them. So you tolerate a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t from anyone else.”
Really? I find it the opposite. My family knows how to push my buttons and get under my skin more than non-relatives. I’m able to brush off alot of what non-relatives say because, well, I’m just not that close to them.
I use KFTC sarcastically, personally.
I’m torn between horrified and amused at the thought of these two mental titans playing Quien Es Mas Racist.
NC4OM, have you noticed that so far the only people who’ve in any way agreed with you when you start ranting about Islam have both been MRAs? If I were you I’d be a little concerned that I was attracting those kinds of intellectual bedfellows.
NWOslave, you didn’t answer my question. Are you, like many MRAs in the online “manosphere”, an Islamophile?
If so, why?
The thing is that even when relatives do deliberately push my buttons, they’re still family. No matter how much they piss me off, I’m kind of stuck with them. So there are lots of things which would cause me to sever ties with anyone else that when family say them I don’t immediately go “you are dead to me, never speak to me again” in the way that I might with anyone who wasn’t family”.
NWO:@Xanthe
“the virulent woman-hating hyperbole being used by the trolls bore no relationship at all to the arguments being made in support of Rebecca.”
Amazing, disagreeing with a pampered little princess who simply couldn’t withhols her angst at being………wait for it………talked to in an elevator. Oh the horribly oppression women endure! How do you manage to keep your sanity?
Ya see the only one who was wrong was dear sweet Beckybitch. Yet you, in all your hatred of anything male, climbed aboard the team-woman bandwagon, as your doing now. What you should’ve said in a comment was, “this spoiled little bitch should keep her all-knowing trap shut. The world doesn’t revolve around her precious feelings, and she should be grateful any man even bothers talking to her” With any luck, word got around about her, and no man will come within spitting distance of her.
Ya see, when you spew a constant diatribe of hatred, which you support, you’re gonna get hatred in return.
me: lol@ all of this because for once i actually remember the past thread as i think others might. theres something called context ha. she wasn’t even pissed or calling it oppression of any sort just mildly annoyed and also we were finding it amusing that people make these arguments that women are bringing the attention by dressing a certain way since we had both garnered unwanted attention while wearing heavy snow-gear. Man NWO twisted that!!
WTH? Did you see the look on that woman’s face when he said that? LOL
And since when do they say “fuck” on mainstream news, that too, during prime time?
ok, ya I can see that, but I’m not sure I can agree that the positions taken earlier in the thread (and not just by you) count as “diverging slightly” from the community. I mean, this all blew up with the concept that “othering” women was wrong, and then some people used that belief as a platform to “other” men, and were called on it.
It’s not a small side issue, it’s the root of feminism, and the root of where the MRAs get things wrong, isn’t it? That people are all people, whether male or female and they are entitled to be treated as such even if they won’t fuck some poor guy, or when they have been hurt (real or percieved) by an uncaring system and now want to form a commune away from it all. Still people.
I don’t see that as a point that feminists can “agree to disagree” on. If people give on that issue, where’s the solid unifying idea? What is feminism without the belief that everyone counts as a person even if they’re behaving in abhorent ways?
(and see where i get wordy… stopping now, promise)
Say you’re on a dark road all alone with a flat tire and no cell phone. And a guy like me pulls over about 50 yards away and starts walking towards you. You’ll probably start to feel pretty darned scared. Of course when I finally get there and offer to give you a hand, maybe you’ll realize you’ve been indoctrinated to fear and hate men. What you should’ve been thinking was, “Thank God a man is here to help!”
If the road is empty enough that I’m “all alone,” why doesn’t he just pull up alongside my car and ask if I want help instead of parking a bizarrely long distance away, solely so he can walk toward me silently before finding out if I even need assistance? Your hypothetical man sounds very strange. I wouldn’t really blame hypothetical-woman for being a bit nervous around someone who’s that oblivious to basic common sense.
@ Rutee – It’s like Clash of the Titans, the troll edition.
To be fair, as hateful and irrational as NC4OM is about Islam, at least she hasn’t declared a desire to rape children like NWO. So she kind of wins the semi-decent human being award by default.
I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who could top NWO on that front, actually.
@CassandraSays
“Or our hypothetical woman could just change her own tire. I know, I know, her vagina renders her unable to operate even very simple tools…”
Or you could just say thank you for your offer but I’m ok, and think to yourself what a kind and generous thing to do.
But of course you had to verbalize your indoctrinated hatred with the strong independent woman theme. And prattle on about your vagina not being a handicap. The indoctrination runs far too deep to actually not hate men. Doesn’t it?
LOL, Slavey. Oversensitive much? Women sure are oppressing you by being able to do things without your help, and you know, just know, that if you offered they’d go out of their way to insult you rather than just already be in the middle of taking care of the task themselves.
It must really suck to be you. I actually feel kind of sorry for you.
No it’s not. I’m a militant atheist, and even I would take issue with that statement, for the fact that it’s simply not true.
I have issues with all religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism included, but I wouldn’t smear the individual practitioners of those religions.
Insulting Islam and Judaism are especially fraught as both are minority religions in this part of the world. Christianity is not marginalised in the West. It’s the religion of the majority and of those in power – despite what your moronic conspiracy theories claim – and there’s no danger of the freedoms of Christians to practice their religion being taken away. Islam and Judaism also (whether incorrectly or not) have racial connotations in addition to religious and political, which makes those critical of them in particular somewhat suspicious.
“To be fair, as hateful and irrational as NC4OM is about Islam”
Cassandra, this really baffles me. Show me one comment, just one, where I was “hateful” and “irrational” about Islam. On the contrary, I have rationally said that as an ideology it is problematic wrt to womens rights and religious rights, and hence, needs to be revised, updated and feminized.
I fail to see anything “hateful” or “irrational” about that view.
Do you think that Islam does not need to be revised, updated and feminized? Do you think that it is not problematic wrt womens rights and religious freedom, as an ideology?
Moreover, why would you be of the opinion that revision of Islam would be hateful or irrational?
Do you think Feminism in general is hateful and irrational?
Seconding Polliwog on pulling up on the road. People trying to help usually pull up beside you and ask if you are OK, they don’t park a distance away and walk.