Good news, everyone! The good folks on the RedditorOfTheDay subreddit picked our friend AnnArchist to be Redditor of the Day yesterday. He filled out a little questionnaire for the RedditorOfTheDay folks listing all sorts of fun facts about himself.
In addition to moderating the Men’s Rights subreddit and posting hilarious videos of women getting beaten up to the beatingwomen subreddit, AnnArchist (who is a dude, despite the name) also enjoys: Skyrim, bass fishing, sports talk radio, chicken tacos, and football!
His biggest pet peeve:
People who want to interfere with other people’s happiness.
His biggest worry about Reddit?
I just hope the community doesn’t grow so quickly that we lose the quality debate and discussion that has kept many of the users around reddit for a long time.
Over on ShitRedditSays, fxexular has helpfully catalogued some of AnnArchist’s contribution to the “quality debate and discussion.” Like his considered opinion on one female judge:
I hope someone kills her.
And his opinion of an alleged false rape accuser:
I hope she was harassed. Fuck I hope her house was firebombed. Lets be clear, I really will applaud anyone who does anything to her, be it slash her tires or slash her throat.
You can find even more of these charming nuggets in my post about him here.
In his answers to the RedditorOfTheDay questionnaire, AnnArchist reveals himself to be a truly sensitive soul. Here, he shares a painful moment from his past:
When I was a senior in HS and when my friend and I saw … the plane fly into the twin towers our first reaction was laughter rather than OMG thats a tragedy. Yea, we’re fucked up. I TPed my High School that night. I’m a horrible person.
Oh, and did I mention that he’s the creator, sole moderator, and basically the only contributor to the NSFW4 subreddit, devoted to posting pictures and videos too horrific and offensive to post anywhere else on Reddit?
Godspeed, AnnArchist! Thank you for making the world a better place!
NOTE: This post is almost entirely made up of sarcasm.
Polliwog: That’s one my favorites by Gaiman, too. He can be screamingly funny – Good Omens is another one I love by him.
Good Omens is basically pure, unadulterated win. I wish Gaiman and Pratchett would write more books together. 🙂
You guys know that Pratchett has Alzheimer’s, right? I’m anticipating the volume of his output dropping off rapidly in the next few years, and it’s making me very sad.
(On a personal level too – everyone I know who’s met him says he’s a lovely man.)
If anyone wants an extra-horrifying philosophical rant about women, you should check out Schopenhauer’s “On Women”. It gave me the creeps for days.
A great site that has the worst of the “canon” is this: http://www.philosophicalmisadventures.com
Here’s a “fun” quote from Kant:
You guys know that Pratchett has Alzheimer’s, right? I’m anticipating the volume of his output dropping off rapidly in the next few years, and it’s making me very sad.
(On a personal level too – everyone I know who’s met him says he’s a lovely man.)
Indeed. Alzheimer’s is a stupid, awful, horrible disease no matter what, but there’s something especially horrible about early-onset Alzheimer’s in someone so gifted. It’s my heartfelt wish to have some opportunity to buy him a banana daiquiri and tell him how much I adore his books before it’s too late (not, I am sure, that he has any shortage of fans doing just that, but Discworld was one of my few reliable sources of happiness when I was going through some severely tough times, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for that).
I’m starting to wonder if brilliantly funny British people are cursed. Between him and Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman, it’s like the universe just feels that Englishmen only get to be around being hilarious for so long. 🙁
Did someone say Neil Gaiman?
Neil Gaiman is my FAVORITE.
Shuggoth’s Old Peculiar is absolutely hilarious; I really recommend all of Neil’s short stories, he’s got a very nice dry British wit (and for his horror an excellent sense of the creepy). Good Omens is one of those books I don’t even have to read more than the first sentence of every paragraph because I know what the rest of it says.
And I want to cry every time someone reminds me Pratchett has Alzheimers. People who are awesome should just have an exemption from having to die.
Shaenon: If there already isn’t a book about how the invention of the printing press was like the invention of Internet piracy, someone needs to write it!
if anyone wants a serious headfuck, read at the mountains of madness while listening to the microphones’ mount eerie. they take about the same time and it’ll freak you the fuck out. (ymmv depending on what drugs your on)
past that, i don’t bother with lovecraft anymore. it’s cool when your going through your pulp phase, but he gets so tedious
Yah. For me, Lovecraft and the X Files were this strange mix of being nightmare-inducingly creepy and poorly written AT THE SAME TIME. It’s a lethal combination.
Oh yea…I remember reading about Schopenhaur’s misogyny…see his last word on women:
Because unlike men, who are oh so individualist and are who’s manliness just renders then immune to any influences from the masses, only women must withdraw from society to “grow” None of this applies to men, just us easily duped, baby making ninnies.
You’d be surprised (actually you wouldn’t) at how often I hear this “argument” that women are mindless and just do whatever society and their peers tell them too. What BS. I can’t ever remember a time where I felt like I fit in with the masses. I don’t “do” what women supposedly do. I have many interests other than make-up and relationships. Most of my time IS spent alone. And all the female friends I have don’t fit this superficial female mold that sexists and misogynists try to insist that we are.
The funny part though? We are rendered practically invisible to most men because of it.
Ugh. This is why I don’t even feel motivated enough to want to bother with philosophy now. This is how ingrained misogyny and racism is in our culture. You keep telling yourself it’s not so bad, but these are the morals and values the US and to an extent the entire west are built upon.
Hey, maybe that explains why I find Meller so funny. It’s like Lovecraft without the tentacles. Maybe we should introduce him to hentai so he can add those to his repertoire?
Ok I just read “On Women”…women are children blah blah blah *yawn* haven’t heard that one before.
and this…oh god this
haha! it’s your modern day equivalent to GOLDDIGGING BITCHEZ!!!!!!111
and this:
so on one hand our reasoning powers are weak because we show sympathy for the less fortunate, but then we are inferior to men’s sense of justice. Do the unfortunate, for example the poor, not have the right to justice? being treated fairly?
Meller is that you?
yea I got nothing to learn from this asshole. He’s an 18th century MRA. In fact, I take it back. People weren’t necessarily smarter or more proper back then. They just wrote the same old bigotry in fancier writing.
Aww hell one more
Dude might have wanted to check out Artemisia Gentileschi, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Fede Galizia, Lavinia Fontana, Sofonisba Anguissola, Louise Moillon, Rosalba Carriera etc…
Georgia O’Keefe is the greatest woman painter and the greatest American Painter. Disagree? You’re wrong. 😉
None of which would have mattered to schopenhauer because schopenhauer
And oh hell, I’ll quote it too, cause this is just SO MRA –
“nature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted with its usual economy. For just as the female ant loses it’s wings after mating, since they are then superfluous, indeed harmful to the business of raising the family, so the woman usually loses her beauty after one or two childbeds, and probably for the same reason …”
She’s fantastic! I was able to go to her museum in Santa Fe, and I was blown away by her cityscapes, which I’d never even heard existed. (I’m an Urban Planner and my only art class was The Metropolis in Modern Art, so I’m a bit biased towards that sort of thing.)
Do you think that vitiates the better stuff, though? Not just metaphysical systems and theories of mind, but the defenses of human rights, the development of ethical systems, etc? Because there is a lot of fantastic philosophy out there, and I don’t think we should throw it out.
Yeah, “On Women” is really the proto-MRA document in nearly every way. I’ve found it very interesting that MRAs are really repeating historical arguments in exact form, except they add “because feminism” to the end of them. Whereas you can clearly see that these arguments precede any sort of organized feminism or mainstream women’s rights movements. I feel like somebody here linked a thing or wrote a thing a while ago about that, about how “those silly uppity women” arguments have existed way before women were even actually seriously politically “uppity”.
This wasn’t directed at me, but since I’m the one who brought up “On Women” and this is a question that I spend a lot of time worrying about, I’ll try to articulate things briefly.
The problem with a lot of these thinkers is that the racism/sexism/whatever isn’t totally contained to their particularly repellant outbursts. For instance Schopenhauer wrote some things on the difference between humans and non-human animals, i.e. what makes humans special cognitively and the like, and what I found particularly striking is that it is nearly the same difference he articulates between women and men. I don’t know which is primary for him, and which influenced what, but it worries me deeply that they don’t seem easily separable in the methodological sense. I mean, you can say the arguments are logically separate– you can argue for one without bringing up the other– but it seems clear to me that Schopenhauer’s means of thinking, his personal intutions, the historical intellectual milleu he was educated by, etc. led him to both conclusions.
There’s also the matter that people’s ideological commitments in metaphysics or theories of mind have led them to bizarre ethical conclusions. I always think of Descartes and neo-Cartesians when I think about that– Descartes’ theories about the mind and body led him to conclude that animals are merely mechanical beings and don’t feel pain as such. Descartes supported vivisection rather vigorously, there is some evidence he performed them himself, and his arguments have been used to the modern day to justify unethical treatment of animals. (There was a thing on Pharyngula recently about a theological problem known as “the problem of animal suffering”– basically, you can justify human suffering theologically but it is very difficult to justify why animals must suffer and feel pain, which makes God look like a huge dick– and a common solution to it is to deny that animals actually suffer in any meaningful way. There was a student in my final philosophy seminar who did his thesis on it and chose to solve the problem in a neo-Cartesian way). Anyway, it’s not clear whether Descartes merely used his mind/body stuff to rationalize his opinions about animals or whether his opinions about animals came from his metaphysical commitments. Either way I find it kind of disturbing, and it seems suspect to me.
So I have to say that I am wary of a lot of philosophers’ metaphysics or whatever (but especially their ethical systems) if they’ve expressed some really ethically suspect things. For many philosophers they aren’t cleanly separable. I know, “historical context, can’t expect them to have been wildly ahead of their time, etc.” but for me, getting something horribly wrong about POC or women or whatever is potentially indicative of getting something horribly wrong about the nature of the mind, or about social interaction and meaning-making, or about the use of language or how we gather knowledge, etc. Arguments also have extra-logical functions and are replicated throughout history for certain purposes– for instance, “why can’t I say the n-word” is not always a genuine question about language use, it comes up only in arguments that have a white racial frame, and is used in order to force black people into seeming “reverse racist” or whatever– and so you have to understand the context around your argument, and what has led you to ask the question, as well as its logical content. (I think many philosophers miss the boat on that point, unfortunately.)
It doesn’t mean throwing out all of philosophy, or even the problematic Western canon, I would say, but it does mean leveling an extra critical eye at it.
hey quackers, ot, but were you the one i was talking with about refused the other night? because if so, you need to see this:
http://spencerackerman.typepad.com/attackerman/2011/11/new-journalism-for-the-real-people.html
No I don’t think it does. Basically if you can overlook when many of the old philosophers talk about human rights, ethics and morality they only mean white men, it’s useful and interesting stuff to know that applies to everyone. All I’m familiar with is the misogynistic philosophers so it gets upsetting, but there are others that aren’t such as John Stewart Mill. Anyway, kladle’s response explained it much more eloquently than me haha.
It still amazes me how so many arguments for female inferiority are exactly the same ones from hundreds ago. Really goes to show how ancient misogyny is which is why it pisses me off that people think we are equal now and there is no more sexism. We’re equal under the eyes of the law which is great, but in terms of opinion, many still think women are idiots. Even other women. It’s sad. At least we’re progressing though.
Yep that was me and that is amazing! 😀
Quackers said @10.54pm:
“Oh oh! what is your opinions on HP Lovecraft? is it good stuff or overrated? I love anything to do with the macabre and supernatural and his works keep coming up”
I really like Lovecraft, he came up with a completely new mythology and world view and he’s so different in his view of the universe. I find myself wondering if he actually believed what he was writing because he writes with such conviction. Yes, he’s undoubtedly both racist and sexist but that’s hardly surprising given the times he lived in. Personally, I find his writing style purple, rather baroque, and a bit squirmy.
I often find that I need to watch my frame of mind when I’m reading him because if I’m already slightly depressed the helplessness he describes in his characters can be quite triggering. Fighting eldrich horrors that you have no chance of defeating can be one hell of a downer.
Speaking of philosophers:
Quackers: Oh oh! what is your opinions on HP Lovecraft? is it good stuff or overrated? I love anything to do with the macabre and supernatural and his works keep coming up
Small doses. He has some flaws, as a writer (ignoring the evidence for racism), the most notable being a sense of the ineffable/nameless horror. It’s one of the things which put me off his writing. One, or two, of those sort of thing is fine, a steady diet gets tiresome, and ends up working contrary to purpose.
If you space it out, the problem is less irksome, though in the story where he takes on that criticism/pokes fun at himself… he uses that trope.
When he’s on, he’s brilliant.
(and, in a strange thing… though I think not related, I had a semi-lovecraftian dream this morning. Not squamous, and not quite nameless, but a terror stalking the world. It was an oddly cinematic dream: it had a coherent narrative, even in the jumping around that dreams do. Whatever it really was was beaten, but not defeated. I still blame the drugs).
That man is NOT an anarchist. I repeat that man is NOT an anarchist. Please do not let this sniveling sociopath give you the impression that he is in any way associated with anarchism. Just had to put that out there 🙂
Hey there, recent lurker, first-time poster. Really digging this site – though I must say some of the links I’ve followed to MRA sites (specifically the “woman beating” sub-reddit) are F*CKING DISGUSTING!!!
At any rate, I used to read a TON of Lovecraft when I was a kid (jr. high/high school). The mention of his racism upthread sent me off to Google, where I found this:
(edits mine)
“On The Creation of N—–s”
H.P. Lovecraft 1912
When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a n—-r.
Don’t think I’ll be revisiting his works anytime soon…