Irony alert! The level of irony in this post is so extreme it might actually harm your computer.
So a couple of days ago, MGTOWer extraordinaire MarkyMark, continuing on with his post-retirement posting binge, shared with us an email he got from a fella who had skipped the country in order to avoid paying child support for his three kids.
I’m a deadbeat dad!!! (light your torches – gasoline in 89, 91, and 95 octane is available in your choice of containers). Yep, I’ve got three kids and I’m behind on my child kidnapping payments by probably 10 grand at present and considerably more behind on alimony and her lawyer fees. I skipped the country rather than be jailed for all of the above compounding my crimes. A runaway slave is the worst kind of slave – one that absolutely refuses to serve his massa.
Yep, that’s right. He compared the legal requirement that he provide financial assistance to his own children to … slavery.
In the rest of his letter, he encouraged other “slaves” to follow in his path.
My favorite bit is the quote I used as the headline:
Women from around the world look better than anything back in the states, cost less unless you’re totally stupid, and are much more easily disposed of.
Ooh. That last bit is rather unfortunately worded – unless he really is suggesting that outside the US it is easier to get rid of the bodies of murdered girlfriends and wives.
So anyway, MarkyMark’s post got linked to on the Men’s Rights subreddit. And this little discussion ensued. You may wish to activate your irony shields now.
Take note of the upvotes and downvotes for these three comments.
Females mature at a younger age than males so they want to have sex with older men
How much older? Because we’re talking about everybody involved being a teen right? or do women mature at 12 and men mature at 40? xD
Butthead, what makes you think 14 year old girls are dying to bone older men? Other than porn or your fantasies, citation needed.
Buttman, those laws are there to prevent kids from fucking people who would have massive leverage over them. Get off your cross.
16 is too old for you?
@Rutee I think they know that and that’s what they want… 😐
Entirely probable.
But remember, women were never oppressed as bad as White Cis Dudes, whom are being kept from a (probably poor) fuck.
I thought they did it to keep from being KNOWN as a poor fuck.
Protip: that 14 year old will definitely tell all her friends on line just how pathetic you really are.
I’m trying so hard not to snark on the “never heard of Schopenhauer” thing, because to a certain extent it is a class issue. We can still mock the mindset of the MRM without mocking Nephy’s lack of education, though. I, individual MRA, have never heard of him? Oh well, obviously he’s not important then. Things outside my personal experience? Those don’t exist. Historical oppression of women? I never saw it, therefore it didn’t happen.
And so on.
yay replacing one ableist slur for another!
/sarcasm
@ jumbofish- Just want to start this comment off by saying that I totally respect your feelings around “batshit,” especially as it’s usually accompanied by the word “insane,” which is an ableist slur. And what follows is not meant to negate a totally legitimate criticism.
Your comment brings up an interesting point, which is that it’s really easy for inoffensive terms to turn offensive if there is underlying prejudice. For example, “negro” being the PC term for Black people during the Civil Rights movement, but that now being an offensive term. Or the use of the term “Special Education” in my school district leading children to call one another “Special,” in a tone that was clearly prejudiced against kids with cognitive disabilities. While I am totally down and understanding of replacing terms that have become slurs with more positive language, I am not sure that it will solve the problem until prejudice against people of color and people with disabilities is eradicated. If people are prejudiced against a group, whatever term is used for that group may eventually become a slur.
That being said, respectful language and criticizing casually offensive terms is hella important.
I think the question is, what exactly are we trying to replace?
Are we trying to replace the usage of “insane” that means crazy, mentally ill, and has been used as a “catch all” for all sorts of disorders and illnesses? Or are we trying to find a word that means the other definition which is “irrational” “not making sense” “illogical”? Because if it’s the latter, then why not just use those words? If it’s the former, then maybe it’s a word that doesn’t need replacing, because we shouldn’t be trying to use that insult in the first place, or use words with that same spirit.
“crazy” should also be in quotes too
because I wasn’t meaning to imply that was a legitimate definition…
@M Dubz as I said above, it’s about which word are we replacing?
“PC” language isn’t about replacing a slur with another slur, it’s about replacing a word that’s a slur that was also used as a broad term that meant non-insulting things as well (the n-word (either one) referring to black people, “shemale” referring to trans women, etc). The words have a history of abuse and discrimination and hate tied to them, but they were also used to just refer to the groups of people as well. New language is meant to separate out the slur. For example, maybe people do say “trans woman” and think in their head “shemale” or “tranny”, who knows, but it’s not tranny, or shemale, and it gives us a word that we can use to refer to trans women that’s not steeped in that history, and in that bigotry.
My comment’s in moderation
@M Dubz as I said above, it’s about which word are we replacing?
“PC” language isn’t about replacing a slur with another slur, it’s about replacing a word that’s a slur that was also used as a broad term that meant non-insulting things as well (the n-word (either one) referring to black people, “shemale” referring to trans women, etc). The words have a history of abuse and discrimination and hate tied to them, but they were also used to just refer to the groups of people as well. New language is meant to separate out the slur. For example, maybe people do say “trans woman” and think in their head “shemale” or “tr*nny”, who knows, but it’s not tr*nny, or shemale, and it gives us a word that we can use to refer to trans women that’s not steeped in that history, and in that bigotry.
M Dubz, I guess I don’t really understand the comparison you’re making between words that started out as polite and have since taken on a negative connotation because of prejudice and words that were always slurs. I mean, I don’t think “faggot” or the n-word were ever considered anything but slurs, and “batshit insane” seems to be more in that category then say “negro” or “special” which were originally well meaning terms if not anymore. I agree that turning polite words into slurs is something that will continue until prejudice is eradicated but that doesn’t seem to be the case here where the word has never been anything but a slur as far as I know.
oops my comment is in moderation too.
there we go 🙂
Also, another thing is about putting the power of group terms in the hands of the marginalized group. All of the slurs I mentioned above (and more) weren’t invented by the group, they were terms by the dominant/privileged group that they used to label the oppressed group with. The n-word, tr*nny, chink, moron, retard, etc… : They were invented by cis people, by white people, by neurotypical people, and they were used to marginalize the labelled group.
This isn’t about replacing one slur with another. It’s not about (and shouldn’t be about) abled people saying “okay insane is ablist, let’s go with “batshit”! (which comes from batshit crazy, batshit insane) It’s about respecting marginalized groups and not labeling them as we have done for so much of our history.
The OTHER thing is that think about how we’re using the word “insane” here. Are we meaning that they’re literally mentally ill? No.
We mean irrational, but why don’t we say that? Why do we use “insane”? Basically we’re using the group (even if we don’t mean to) AS AN INSULT. That’s WHY these words are insults, because being called a mentally ill person IS SUPPOSED TO BE INSULTING.
So we’re using the identity of a group as an INSULT.
Just like when people call Ann Coulter a “tr*nny” or say she looks like a trans woman… they don’t mean she’s literally one, they mean she LOOKS like us, and we’re supposed to be ugly… it’s meaning that we, me, as a trans person, looking like me, is insulting…
this is the same thing.
So yeah… if you mean MRAs are irrational, just say they are. We don’t need a replacement for “insane”.
@ Ami- you are absolutely right. Blanket “yes” to everything you just said, especially the bits about privileged people creating slurs for non-privileged people. I think that definitely helps answer my question about how to prevent “slur drift” (for lack of a better term). If terminology and language are actively managed by marginalized groups, it will hopefully be more difficult for the broader population to co-opt those terms and turn them against those groups. So thanks!
Stopping the use of problematic language isn’t going to eradicate bigotry alone obviously. I didn’t say what I did to start up a debate topic about using prejudicial words (if they matter in the end or not). I know you say you didn’t mean to dismiss me but it totally sounds like you are right now. I honestly can’t imagine you would have brought up the debate of ignoring problematic language if it were a slur like “n*****” or “f*****”. I don’t see many people questioning their right to use those words in the social justice comms.
I don’t think saying “oh we shouldn’t try to stop x because in the end people will still have prejudiced” is really a good thing to say as a person involved in social justice. “People will never change” makes social justice kinda pointless don’t you think?
@jumbofish- I tried to ask the question without erasing your totally legitimate concerns and I appear to have failed. Thanks to you and Ami for schooling me! Sitting down and shutting up now.
I’m not personally sensitive to a lot of the slurs related to mental illness as such, but I am definitely sensitive to the implication that anyone who spends time endorsing reprehensible beliefs must be mentally ill (which is something using those words usually implies). Calling something or somebody “crazy” (or insert your favorite slur here) is an easy way to dismiss the person or their beliefs as not worth engaging with because they’re beyond the pale of reason. This is bad for two reasons: one, it says that people who are mentally ill don’t have agency or rationality and aren’t worth having genuine interactions with, and two, it pretends that certain lines of reasoning which may be dangerous and/or common (like misogyny or right-wing fundamentalism) can be brushed off as if they didn’t actually have effects in real people’s lives.
As Ami said, if you mean that someone’s being irrational, just say that they’re being irrational. If you mean that their beliefs are really bizarre, say that. If you think someone’s detached from reality you should say as much. For a certain kind of person who’s really out there and inventing perpetual motion machines, stockpiling ammo for the upcoming New World Order takeover, or covering their roof with tinfoil, there’s always the terms “crackpot” and “crank”.
Just to finish out that thought, I was engaging in some philosophical speculation about the nature of how certain words become slurs and what to do about the underlying causes. I have the privilege of those speculations because most slurs don’t apply to me. Sorry you guys!
I found this post on why you shouldn’t use “crazy” (or related words) to describe viewpoints in particular, which I thought was pretty good:
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/05/28/ableist-word-profile-crazy-to-describe-political-viewpoints-or-positions/
Point taken. I tend to use “batshit” to mean “irrational and deliberately ignoring information which doesn’t support their worldview”, and I should find a better way to say that.
I’m not sure that some MRAs aren’t mentally ill, though. It depends a lot on how we define mental illness, but there’s a level of paranoia with a lot of them that does seem to be well outside what most people would define as healthy. Which is where it gets problematic, because you don’t want to armchair diagnose over the internet too much, but then you have people like MRAL with whom it’s pretty clear that there actually is something odd going on with their thought processes from the way that they interpret and filter information.
But then there are also a lot of them who I don’t think they believe even half of what they write, it’s all just a mass of attempts to justify the desire to hurt women. And then there are people like NWO with whom it seems to be a bit of both.
@cassandra
You know they aren’t that much more paranoid than your typical conservatives. Do you want to call all of them mentally ill too? I dunno I feel like people are just trying to find a lazy excuse for people who are just bad in general. I don’t buy it.