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.
Also I am not joking about wanting to buy dictionaries for trolls. Seriously, you guys, we can make this happen.
I think a package of things would be better than just a dictionary. Something that includes a “Logic for Dummies”-type of book, and a grade school reader – the type that have some stories and questions at the end that measure reading comprehension.
And I’m a firm believer in if a person has to tell you the joke is funny, it’s not. I don’t mind explanations of jokes, but just outright “C’mon, it’s funny!” for something that is not won’t work. There’s a difference between having a morbid sense of humor and having a mean sense of humor.
“I don’t mind explanations of jokes, but just outright “C’mon, it’s funny!” for something that is not won’t work. There’s a difference between having a morbid sense of humor and having a mean sense of humor.”
Wow, this. Also, saying something offensive just to get a rise doesn’t make you instant Edgy Comic Genius sticking it to the PC thought police. Average purveyor of tired troll humour doesn’t consider that maybe people aren’t laughing because they’re just not as funny as they think they are.
Also, saying something offensive just to get a rise doesn’t make you instant Edgy Comic Genius sticking it to the PC thought police.
I totally agree on that one. I hate when people whose jokes I don’t laugh at because they’re boringly offensive bring this up. So, so many times I’ve had to explain that no, the joke is not in fact edgy as I’ve heard it a million times in a million permutations, and to be edgy is to tell a joke that doesn’t uphold the status quo. I’ve also rattled off lines that would make the joke funnier, or asked questions about the premise that are funnier than the joke itself. Of course, those people don’t find actual edgy humor to be funny. If I want revenge at not being able to get those few precious and humorless minutes back, I get all analytical and bore them. (College was good for something!) Sometimes it’s just too tedious to explain it, so I go with my standard line “Well, I don’t know where you’re from, but on this planet, jokes require punchlines to be funny.” Best said in total earnest.
I remember reading an article about Rodney Dangerfield and how some of the people who tried to copy his brand of humor would miss the point – his complaint was about how some the “jokes” were actually just mean and not self-deprecating as his were.
Woman shoots man in head = misandry.
Man shoots woman in head = joke!
I just want someone from the MRA to outright admit that all he wants to do is beat up women.
Ullere: Seconding and thirding what has been said.
I’m 56.
I’ve been reading works in English by US and US and Canadian feminists (and a few bilingual works by Chicana femists) since 1981. I’ve debated issues with men, and women. I did my doctoral dissertation on constructions of race and ethnicity in North American feminism, 1960s-1990s. I read my way through Second Wave feminist works (including the original SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL where Solanis’ work was printed), and the later critiques of such works by feminists of color and womanists, and a number of Third Wave works as well (the “wave” structure is limited), and have backtracked to read a bunch of works by white 19th century American feminists (they would not have used that word, but Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Standon, etc., plus the debate between them and Frederick Douglass around the issue of voting rights being given to African American men first), and a bunch of women’s history and theology (I’ve read a bunch of Daly, and while some of her early stuff was very appealing, I agree with others about the problems with her later work and philosophy). I have whole bookshelves I’ve read on feminsm, queer theory, critical race theory–blah blah blah blah, plus lived experiences. I teach and publish on women authors and feminist issues (among other topics),
This experience supports what others have said: you are not saying anything new. You may or may not be Simon under another name, but it doesn’t really matter: what you are saying to us has been said by many before. It’s not new. It’s not original (that you think it’s original or that we have anything to learn from you is an indication of your ignorance).
Plus, purpose of this blog? Mocking misogyny. If you want to have serious discussions with feminists, this isn’t the place for it, and even in the places for it, you need to lurk more, learn more, and enter the conversation with some other perspective than “I am here to mansplain to you my lovelies!).
Because I guarantee you, we have heard all that crap before, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
You. Are. Boring.
I’m starting to think that groups like MRAs are comprised of sociopaths who came together to avoid admitting they are sociopaths.
I just realized as I wrote it that my last statement may come off as abilist. I have a mental illness myself, so I should know better. I retract that.
*Ableist
Goddamit, I’m sorry. just woke up.
Ullere:
So can we conclude from this that you think jokes about raping men are ok? What conclusion should we draw from the fact that, when the issue arose directly, you did not say that rape jokes are not ok?
Ullere:
Again, a curious degree of specificity. Revealing personal details in the absence of a direct threat: ok, or not ok?
Ullere:
But the things you carefully don’t say are so interesting.
Cassandra:
It’s an easy mistake to make, since most if not all of his best-known work was before he was shot, and he died young. I don’t think the fact that Solanas didn’t kill anyone makes AVfM and the people who has the same views they do on this issue any less silly.
Ullere:
I don’t think she’s a feminist activist. She may think of herself as a feminist philosophically, but it’s certainly not what she’s known for. I wouldn’t say she represents feminism, i.e., I don’t think there’s anything approaching even an informal consensus among feminists that she is representative.
And that’s all independent of the incident you’re referring to, which, again, widely condemned. I think she was wrong, every feminist-qua-feminist I’ve seen opine about it thinks she was wrong, really everyone I’ve seen opine about it thinks she was wrong.
Ullere:
Feminism is strongly bound up with love, peace, security, and justice.
“How dare you draw conclusions about what I think on the basis of the things I say!”
Many of the MRAs I’ve seen elsewhere are merely allowing their inner asshole to emerge in the guise of an Internet Tough Guy, so to that extent they resemble a sociopath by choice, rather than owing to faulty brain chemistry or mental illness. So it would not at all surprise me to see an objection to the behaviour of MRAs on the grounds that confusion with them is giving sociopaths a bad name, that they don’t want to be associated with. (That would be perversely amusing.)
(That was to Jenn93, prior to Hershele’s thorough demolition of Ullere.)
Jokes that make light of sexual violence are usually considered tasteless. I learned that the hard way.
I didn’t like the comic, it contains John Travolta FFS; but I didn’t wish harm upon the creator. How odd.
Dear Ullere and Apeman,
No one with a working brain took “do your part” seriously, because everything that happened in that video was clearly fake. I’m still wondering why MRAs decided to take it so seriously. It’s very true that they dish it out sexist jokes and can’t take them, but they also have a hard time distinguishing pretend from real life.
“…on the grounds that confusion with them is giving sociopaths a bad name, that they don’t want to be associated with.”
That’s not too far off, actually. It’s frustrating when one is obligated to spend extra time taking extra responsibility and care for of a mind that sabotages, while people with healthy brains act like dipshits because it’s easier for them then then having to be introspective.
There are a lot of people with healthy brains that don’t use it, and further cast shit on those who’s problems are involuntary. What the hell is their excuse?
I don’t even care how offensive the video is. It’s not okay to send random “vigilantes” after people. It wouldn’t be okay to do to an actual criminal, for fuck’s sake! Valerie Solanas deserved to go to jail for shooting Andy Warhol, not to have random strangers set on her to enact whatever punishment they deemed right.
Definitely agree. Health is wasted on the healthy, as it were. I would imagine that some MRAs do have mental issues that are in all states of being dealt with, but a lot of people take their good mental health for granted.
And people who have the freedom to choose to be miserable and mean are the last to recognize and/or sympathize with people who can’t choose.
Ullere: Yeah, I totally called you a rapist. Except for the part where I immediately clarified that I wasn’t calling you a rapist, just that you were in the same class of troll as a wannabe-rapist.
Trololololololol.
Man, remember when John Travolta was attractive?
Why do I only hear dudes make this particular claim? Do I just not get out enough?
I believe there is a lot of overreaction going on here. A video that contains person a shooting person b does not mean that the person creating the video actually believes that shooting people is OK. Just because someone makes a joke about rape, it does not mean that the person believes that rape is OK.
“Why did Michael Jackson go to K-Mart? He heard boy’s shorts were half off. ”
“Why does Penn State like to be losing at half time? Because they like you to be a little behind in the locker room”.
Does someone who tells those jokes support the abuse of young boys? Obviously not.
But I am in agreement with David’s initial point, which is that if you disagree with something such as this (or the SCUM video) then speak out against it. Don’t seek to put bounties on people. And that point is likely lost on those who are so full of hatred (like MRA) that they cannot see their own hypocrisy.
hellkell: “Why do I only hear dudes make this particular claim? Do I just not get out enough?”
I have seen/heard female comics make rape jokes.
I think rape jokes can be funny, and also hurtful and insensitive and intimidating and humiliating. The “funny” doesn’t magically cancel the other things out. It’s like putting sugar on rat poison and then saying “Of course it’s good food, it’s sweet, isn’t it?”
I don’t think rape jokes are automatically unfunny, I just don’t think that it’s okay to sacrifice all other standards just because something’s funny.
There is, perhaps, a difference (or at least a distinction) between jokes that rely on a presumed shared understanding of rape as a horrible, evil act and jokes that rely on a presumed shared understanding of rape as desired or deserved.
Oh Jesus Christ. This was posted on AVfM today (along with a long, rage-spittle-filled rant about DAVID FUTRELLE MANGINA):
That’s right; if Elam’s actions lead directly to murder, it will be feminism’s fault.
Holy shitfuck.
@Holly: Sure, if a woman’s husband kills her, it’s her fault (MRM dogma), so it’s quite clear if women (general) are killed, it’s their fault/feminism’s fault.
And does Elam he understand at all that VIDEO IS FICTIONAL???????
I think what Elam is saying in that comment actually is: “Because we aren’t allowed to put people in jail for making a fictional video (BECAUSE FEMINISM), you have only yourselves to blame if we decide to kill them instead.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
I kind of think that rape jokes are automatically unfunny — or at least presumptively unfunny — but I admit that I say that as someone who recently spent four days unable to leave the house after being very badly triggered about my own rape, so yeah. I probably have a different point of view than a lot of other people.
Also, this is possibly just my point of view, but it seems to me that the intended response to the SCUM video was “WTF? That’s fucked up.” Whereas the intended response to the Travolta “joke” was “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, he showed her.” Which doesn’t absolve the SCUM video of its fuckedupedness at all, but I do think that the enthusiasm some people have for “teaching lessons” to stuck-up bitches (“Do you have any idea how many shots it would take to get a girl like me to have sex with you?”) is pretty gross.