Here’s a picture someone posted to Reddit about a day ago:
The general consensus amongst Redditors who saw the post was that it was hilarious. At last count, the post had gotten 1,157 up votes and 318 down votes, giving it 830 net upvotes. That’s a shitload, even for Reddit; it’s gotten more net upvotes than all but one of the posts currently on the front page of the subreddit (r/vertical) it was posted in.
It’s also pretty fucking offensive — a rape joke, a murder-of-women joke, and a necrophilia joke all rolled into one. Sure, it’s a “joke,” but it wouldn’t be hard to make the argument that pictures like this one, which make violence against women into a joke, can actually serve to encourage such violence.
If you did believe this, what would be the appropriate reaction to such a picture? You could post critical remarks about it in the comments section for the post on Reddit. You could post about it in ShitRedditSays, a subreddit devoted to ferreting out misogyny and racism and other bigotries on Reddit. You could post about it on your blog.
Or you could declare the picture an “unambiguous call for murder” and the person responsible for it to be a ” depraved and murderous male supremacist.” You could offer a reward for information on that person’s real identity, and post that person’s personal information — including their phone number, their place of employment, their home address — online. And if someone points out that posting such information might lead to this person being physically harmed or even killed, you could say: I don’t give a shit.
But that would be wrong.
It would also be terribly time-consuming, because crap like this gets posted to Reddit all the fucking time.
The proper response to speech you don’t like, however vile you think it is, isn’t violence or harassment, but more speech.
If what someone says goes beyond the bounds of free speech, you have other options. If someone threatens you personally, in a posting on the internet or by letter or email or phone call, you have the right to (and you should) report them to the proper authorities. If someone threatens you physically, you have the right to defend yourself.
But a misogynistic picture on the internet is not a threat to you. Nor is a misandrist video. These things are challenges — and in many ways opportunities — for you to make your case against hate. Responding to shit you don’t like on the internet with harassment and threats — implicit or explicit — of violence? That is hate.
A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule – parody.
Your going to say that refering to this image as advocating murder isn’t a parody of John the other refering to scum as advocating murder.
‘Or you could declare the picture an “unambiguous call for murder” and the person responsible for it to be a ” depraved and murderous male supremacist.” You could offer a reward for information on that person’s real identity, and post that person’s personal information — including their phone number, their place of employment, their home address — online.’
Isn’t a parody of JTO’s
The group of swedish women advocating murder – and staging fantasies of murder in sadistic ecstasy will be publicly identified on this site and on Register-Her.com. Complete details of these individuals names, addresses, phone numbers, government identification numbers, drivers licences, and employers will be permanently published.
They even read the same, but maybe I’m wrong, it isn’t a parody then my bad. I assume from my other posts constantly making the point that you shouldn’t target people for making offensive material shows that I understood the point in the article.
Also I am not joking about wanting to buy dictionaries for trolls. Seriously, you guys, we can make this happen.
Hey, they’re already on the internet. They have access to dictionaries, they’re just not using them.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/parody
I didn’t realise we were arguing. I made a post, I was placed in a group with rapists, I made another point I was called sexist without having said anything sexist. I’m not arguing with anyone, I’m happy to debate points and hear others views. But I do find it interesting that I have been constantly insulted on this site, been the target of various ad hominen attacks, been called sexist, had my arguement misrepresented, all the while I read about how hate filled avfm is.
Maybe they’re luddites and online dictionaries scare and confuse them? NWO seems to consider any book published after 1900 to be untrustworthy. Maybe a nice old dictionary is just what he needs. Education and recycling of used books all in one charitable program!
The way I read the OP, it’s not parody. It’s drawing a parallel to make a critical point. Not comedy, not ridicule, just criticism.
Sarcasm and calling people stupid – totally the same as outing someone’s personal information, you guys!
Are we going to play another round of trolling or just stupid? I can’t play for long, I need to get some sleep.
Hate is hate, and once again a gross misrepresentation of my point. I haven’t provided anyones personal details. I do not represent avfm, but I don’t really fancy being called black by this pot anymore.
And really, I feel a lot of people are missing the point. It’s not a question of “Is the SCUM video offensive?” It is. Unquestionably. The issue here is, does it warrant violating people’s privacy in order to give those “loose cannons” something to aim at? No, it fucking doesn’t.
Funny how that was the point of David’s post, and yet apparently not a single MRA picked up on that fact. It’s almost like they’re in denial or something.
The funniest thing about all this is that I have never seen a feminist quote Solanos in an admiring way. I’m not sure why she’s even considered a feminist by anyone – she was basically the classic lone gunman figure, a mentally ill loner who stalked and killed a celebrity. The only time I’ve ever seen her quoted approvingly was by a group of men (Manic Street Preachers, first album – check out the liner notes), and that’s because one of their members was mentally ill and full of self-loathing. Feminists as a whole do not like Solanos. If that book had been written by, say, Steinem, or Friedan, that would be alarming. But it wasn’t. It’s a manuscript written by a mentally ill person who killed someone. Of course it’s horrible – the woman was not well. It’s like what would happen if NWO wrote an entire book.
I have no idea why that particular group of students decided to dig it up and do something with it, or even what they intended to say really, but it’s pretty clear from the overall “WTF is this shit?” reaction from feminists how little to do with actual feminism it has. But MRAs will keep flogging that dead horse for all its worth, since this is the best example of the idea that feminists all hate men that they can come up with. A group of college students whose motivations are unknown, who made a really stupid student movie.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, we have Sodini, and Brevik, and that other guy in SoCal. And that’s just within the last couple of years.
‘cassandra
From
http://community.feministing.com/2010/04/19/on-the-scum-manifesto/comment-page-1/#comments
‘I was surprised by the SCUM manifesto, too. However, I was surprised that I found it to be so… good.’
‘However, every time I read another study about how women are just worse off in spacial relations, or they don’t do as well as men in sales positions, or aren’t X, Y, and Z when men are, I think of SCUM. I think that Solanas brought out the violence of the results of those studies that so often led to less rights and more inequality for women.’
From http://www.womynkind.org/valbio.htm
P.S. Valerie you will always be my personal hero!!!!!!
from Feministing
‘ I have been a huge fan of Valerie Solarna’s for a few years now, she is as instrumental to my radical feminism and queer theory as Beauvoir or Lorde. I am curious, for most of the people on this website tend to be more of the liberal feminist types, what do you all make of this manifesto? You don’t have to read “the whole thing”, but it’s not very long so I hope I persuade you to do so by simply saying it is WORTH reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts of shock, disgust, dismay, love, laughter, joy, and how this manifesto compares to our awful contemporary postion, as womyn…in this world.
Love, Emma Goldman ‘
Florynce Kennedy represented her and called her “one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement.”
Ti-Grace Atkinson (the New York chapter president of NOW) said she was “the first outstanding champion of women’s rights.”
from amazon’s review of her book
‘First off, Val was not deranged..she was hyperintelligent and an intense counterculturist. This aggresiveness oughtta be refreshing to those used to passive whitewashed politicos of now or yesteryear. her bright, blunt viewpoints had to be intentionally chalked with shock-value’
‘The SCUM Manifesto is a brilliant work. Valerie Solanas, in forty or so swift pages, answers intelligently, cogently, and, most important, passionately 2000 years of misogynist writings which comprise the majority of the western history canon. She emulates both the rhetorical and the rational argumentative styles of all of the great men of history who have had far worse things than what is in SCUM to say about women. Lest we not forget: Aristotle: Women are Mutilated Men, Plato: Women are halfway between man and beast, Kant: Women should not be moral agents, Nietszche: Women, at best, are cows, Freud: Women can be understood completely in terms of the penis they lack. ‘
‘the more I read it, the truer it gets. A clear, cutting, razor sharp view of patriarchal society. Any woman who has been screwed over by men repeatedly and is at least modestly cerebral will have elements of thinking in common by degree with Valerie Solanas whether she knows it or not. The people calling it a farce don’t understand what Solanas was saying. This is dead serious and brilliant. ‘
‘this is something thats really quite fun to read and us females could always do with another Valerie so BUY IT! ‘
‘It’s real easy to label Solanas as nutso, psychotic, dismissing the premises of her Manifesto along with her. Well, it’s not that easy or practical. Yes, Solanas was unbalanced but her book exposed the psychotic gender relationship in our society as you are reading it. With her precise and concise narrative, the fate of women in our society is revealed, and the bringing to the light of its misogyny is unmistakable’
I don’t really fancy finding any more. Maybe none of these people are feminists so your claim is still valid.
Ah, so you are an MRA and not the impartial commenter you claim to be. Thanks for letting us know.
Now go find me a current source who’s an actual figure in the mainstream feminist movement, not a random blog commenter.
And then try to explain away Brevik.
I mean, even if we were to accept your idea that Solanos was somehow centeral to modern feminism (she isn’t – look how few people here have even read her book), you would then have one example of a genuinely deranged woman associated with feminism who killed one man over 30 years ago, and who most modern feminists are very vocally not fans of.
And then on the other side of the equation, we have Brevik, who very clearly subcribed to MRA ideas, and who many MRAs defended when he went on his rampage. And he killed many people, very recently.
Once again you are trying to equate ugly speech with actual violence. It’s not going to work. Also, you missed the point of the post entirely – the Photoshopped clip above is ugly, but notice how not a single feminist is calling for physical harm to be done to the man who created it.
And that right there is the fundamental difference between most feminists and most MRAs. Most feminists don’t want physical harm to befall the people whose ideas they don’t agree with, and we don’t put out hitlists.
Well, Breivik has a fan, who also identifies as an MRA and anti-feminist.
So by the same logic that’s being used above (i.e. where quotes from what are clearly extreme radical feminists are cited as examples of mainstream feminist opinion), MRAs as a whole must be fans of Breivik.
And therefore, if Ullere is an MRA, he must therefore also be a fan of Breivik and an apologist for the mass murder of teenagers.
Have I got that right?
The thing is, it wasn’t just one MRA who praised Brevik, or made excuses for him, it was lost of them. Same with Sodini, and the dude in SoCal who shot up the hair salon. Every time a man goes on a murderous rampage, as long as he expresses anger towards women as part of his grievance, there are MRAs who come out in support of him. Not at some point in the past – right now.
They’re obsessed with Solanos because she’s the one thing they can use to attempt to justify why it’s OK for so many people in their movement to advocate violence, in some sort of childish “yeah well you started it!” way.
Even Breivik, who killed kids ffs.
‘The funniest thing about all this is that I have never seen a feminist quote Solanos in an admiring way.’
I found some quotes for you, to expand you knowledge of feminist view points on Solanas, not to prove anything to you.
Every comment from you appears to be a straw man, I don’t know if I should keep pointing them out.
‘even if we were to accept your idea that Solanos was somehow centeral to modern feminism’
I never said that, thats not my idea.
‘Now go find me a current source who’s an actual figure in the mainstream feminist movement, not a random blog commenter.’
Presumably the amazon quotes, the quotes from previous presidents of the NOW new york etc don’t fit your definition of ‘mainstream’ FM. Infact it would be impossible to find a ‘mainstream’ figure who likes solanas as she is an extremist.
‘one example of a genuinely deranged woman associated with feminism who killed one man over 30 years ago’
She never kileld anyone. I do not personally associate her with feminism, she never worked with or was a member of any feminist organisation. However that doesn’t mean that no feminist has ever been inspired by or believed in her work.
‘And then on the other side of the equation, we have Brevik, who very clearly subcribed to MRA ideas, and who many MRAs defended when he went on his rampage. And he killed many people, very recently.’
No ‘Mainstream’ MRAs defended him, the ones who did are obviously extremists or idiots, are there no idiots nor extremists in the feminist movement?
‘Once again you are trying to equate ugly speech with actual violence’
Nope, I wasn’t trying to do that. You said you had never seen a feminist quote Solanos in an admiring way so I was curious if anyone ever had.
‘Also, you missed the point of the post entirely – the Photoshopped clip above is ugly, but notice how not a single feminist is calling for physical harm to be done to the man who created it.’
I assume your implying that MRA’s called for harm against the Scum video participants, this is not true. Even in this article David says that by posting their details avfm is exposing and increasing them to the possiblilty of harm, not calling for harm against them. A fine line maybe, but definitely a line. One after all is a felony.
‘And that right there is the fundamental difference between most feminists and most MRAs. Most feminists don’t want physical harm to befall the people whose ideas they don’t agree with, and we don’t put out hitlists.’
Most MRAs do not want physical harm to befall anyone, I’d hope that most people don’t want physical harm to happen to anyone. Now I’m sure there are some MRAs with disgusting beliefs and I am sure there are people with disgusting beliefs. I am sure there are feminists, albiet not ‘mainstream’, who call for the elimination of all men.
@wetherby
‘And therefore, if Ullere is an MRA, he must therefore also be a fan of Breivik and an apologist for the mass murder of teenagers.’
Where was this logic used? Where did I say that if any feminist admires solanas then all must admire solanas. What post are you reading?
Now I’m searching for MRA’s celebrating Breivik, I’m sure they exist. In the mean time please don’t attach any sentiments or points to me that I have not made.
http://manboobz.com/?s=breivik
Yay, another idiotic nerd. I swear…
Look, morons, that video is an ad for a play, performing the SCUM Manifesto. Seeing as we’re on planet Earth, the odds are pretty fucking good that the whole point is to mock Solanas and the manuscript. Maybe you should fucking learn a thing or two about things before commenting on them.
[quote]thats the difference , go ahead and expose whoever is responsible they deserve to be exposed[/quote]
Dude, we didn’t want anyone unmasked for celebrating Breivik, who actually fucking shot people. If you don’t directly threaten anyone, your right to anonymity trumps everything else. Even if this weren’t to mock Solanas, and even if this were dead fucking serious, as long as they hadn’t hurt anyone or directly threatened someone, they would *STILL* be entitled to anonymity.
Thanks david, your article is third from the top on google for ‘Brevik MRA’. Also good men project, but no articles promoting his beliefs yet. Your reddit experiment was interesting though.
Most of it seems to be pass the buck, with many MRM sites and activists blaming both feminism and the left for infuriating this disturbed man, and feminists blaming MRA’s and the right for radically politicising this disturbed man.
Along with a batch of hatred and ignorance.
Oh jesus peter nolan…
‘Those who were killed were not “innocent victims” in the main. Anders Breivik is as sane as the next man. …’
‘These “innocent victims” of whom you speak are the children of those who are criminals. And since Anders Breivik could not get to the REAL criminals he went after the children. Is that such a bad idea? Are they not legitimate targets if the primary targets can not be reached?’
Even so the majority of people who commented and the majority of articles seem to be in condemnation of the attack, I do see some equivocation from some MRA’s though. I don’t have a taste for politicising tragedy, breivik is evil and needs locked away.
You know… in isolation it actually isn’t a poorly-constructed joke. It isn’t Shakespeare, or even Carlin, but it kind of works on its own levels. The fact that it works in some necrophilia actually works to its advantage, from a certain standpoint. And, yes… rape jokes can be funny. Any subject can be the source of humor, IMO, because most humor is really based on some sort of horror.
But you can’t create a joke like this, or simply laugh at it, as though it exists outside of a larger context. Especially in the Internet era, where everything gets amplified and spreads far and wide, it is hard to tell how things are going to be taken and when context they will be put in. It doesn’t actually need to say “do your part” or be tied to a manifesto in order to be a problem… because the joke itself isn’t the problem. The larger culture is the problem, a problem that the whole “SCUM Manifesto” thing doesn’t really have to deal with as much.
The problem is that people who are weak by themselves, who would never take action on their own, find the strength to act in the shared experience of like-minded people coming together. That’s why alcoholics go to meetings, why the military teaches unit cohesion, and why when 90% of us decide to make New Year’s resolutions the ones who do it in a group have a better chance of success. The dark side is that these sorts of jokes on the Internet are part of a larger group dynamic, and that dynamic creates an amplifying effect where average guys feel safe to be giant jerks, and the men on the edge of reason get an encouraging boost into violence and rape.
And the truth is that we already live in a culture that contains casual references to violence in day to day life, in movies and TV shows, and even in some supposed “news” sources from certain political corners. That violent language and imagery is especially pronounced against women, and has a sexist component that cannot be dismissed. Take that underlying current of nastiness, add in hundreds of jokes like this, stir it up online with the thousands of people cheering for it, and it is a recipe for disaster.
Not quite so funny anymore… and not really much like the SCUM business, which for all its problems does not exist in the same context of cultural echo chamber to make it especially dangerous.
Did you miss the word “current”? I’m not sure if Atkinson is even still alive, to be honest. If she is she must be very old. Have you even heard of Second Wave versus Third Wave feminism? I honestly don’t think you have the knowledge required to have this debate, if you thought that Atkinson could be described as “current”.
BTW, Solanos actually did kill someone – Andy Warhol. She was a lot like the guy who shot Lennon, in a way. See what I mean when I say that you’re not qualified to discuss this?
“I assume your implying that MRA’s called for harm against the Scum video participants, this is not true. Even in this article David says that by posting their details avfm is exposing and increasing them to the possiblilty of harm, not calling for harm against them. A fine line maybe, but definitely a line. One after all is a felony.”
You’re either not understanding what David was saying or deliberately misinterpreting it. The guys who maintain that list have made it quite clear that they would like it if harm was done to those women, they’re just not going to do it themselves because it would be a felony. They have no intention of pulling the trigger, but they showing the people who are willing to shoot where to point the gun. Perhaps you are naive about how the internet works, but the people running that site are not. To expose a person’s identifying information is to put them in danger, especially if anyone is already angry with them. The people running that site know exactly what they’re doing.
“Most MRAs do not want physical harm to befall anyone”
I wish that that was true, but having read many posts and many comments from MRAs over the years, the ones who don’t wish for physical harm to befall anyone seem to be in the minority. The distinction that you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge is that for the MRM, the people who are the equivalents of Solanos ARE the mainstream. If you don’t want those people steering the ship, then you better get to work right now, because people like that are the public face of your movement. I know lots of people who are not feminists, and most of them, if they are aware of MRAs at all, consider them to be strange and dangerous extremists.
” I am sure there are feminists, albiet not ‘mainstream’, who call for the elimination of all men.”
In terms of big names, there’s one – Mary Daly. You’ll find that she’s not terribly popular among the younger generation either, or among older feminists who aren’t true radfems. I tried to read several of her books in college, and quickly came to the conclusion that her values were anathema to me.
If you took one of her books and regendered it, though, what you’d end up with would look a lot like any comment by one of our regular MRA trolls (David K Meller), just with less sex, since Daly is a former theologian and not very keen on sex in general.
The only other remotely big-name feminist who says stuff like that is a woman called Heart, who’s so widely regarded as a lunatic by most feminists that I used to belong to a group that was formed partly in order to make fun of her posts. She’s been run off of every mainstream feminist blog she’s tried to comment on, so she and a group of similar oddballs mostly sit around and talk to each other on their own little blogs. Most feminists don’t even realise that they exist, unless they’ve seen a bigger block quoting Heart in order to mock her. (Her rhetorical style is rather hilariously woo-woo.)
And yeah, as vile as it is that anyone supported Breivik, I don’t want them outed, because once again, that is not how feminists operate. I know that you really, really want us to be a perfect reflection of the MRM, including all its worst qualities, but we’re not.
Warhol survived. He was changed, but he survived. And AFAIK, Solanas hated Warhol for cheating her out of her work. Whether he did or not is immaterial, as her motive doesn’t match the ones MRAs want.
She’s also dead. Finding a current feminist with a serious following who seriously wants to cause violence is hard. Hell, it’s hard to find lesbian seperatists, and they don’t call for violence.
‘BTW, Solanos actually did kill someone – Andy Warhol. She was a lot like the guy who shot Lennon, in a way. See what I mean when I say that you’re not qualified to discuss this? ‘
No solanos shot Andry warhol, she was charged with attempted murder.
‘In July of 1968 the pop artist was shot two to three times into his chest by a woman named Valerie Solanis. Andy was seriously wounded and only narrowly escaped death. Valerie Solanis had worked occasionally for the artist in the Factory. Solanis had founded a group named SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) and she was its sole member. When Valerie Solanis was arrested the day after, her words were “He had too much control over my life”.
Warhol never recovered completely from his wounds and had to wear a bandage around his waist for the rest of his life. ‘
Valerie Solanos actually did not kill someone. If not having knowledge of whether or not she killed Andy Warhol is required for this debate then I hope you see what you mean when you say your not qualified to discuss this.
‘. The distinction that you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge is that for the MRM, the people who are the equivalents of Solanos ARE the mainstream. If you don’t want those people steering the ship, then you better get to work right now’
Well I hope this is considered work, though I really have no interest in steering any ship that works in the interests of only half of the world.
I have no interest in the waves of feminism, I have read some articles on them. Even some that perscribe that the MRA are another wave of feminism. The subject doesn’t inspire me and I’d rather take a persons view from them directly rather than tying it to an overall theology.
Loads of posts on radfemhub are pretty violently anti male but then they are not mainstream, perhaps Sharon Osborne mocking the castration of a man on the talk is main stream and a big enough name for you. But then is she a feminist? It’s hard to really pin anything down. I’m not trying to debate who has the sickest fringe elements.