While Reddit’s reluctant, long-overdue banning of subreddits devoted to sexualized pictures of children drew applause from many Redditors, there has, of course, been a considerable backlash from pedophiles, ephibophiles, and other assorted apologists. ShitRedditSays has already started covering this, and I’ll be doing some posts of my own.
So far the most appalling thing I’ve run across (thanks to ScrappyB for pointing it out in the comments here) comes from the BeatingWomen subreddit — which is, unfortunately, a real thing. Some people, you see, are suggesting that maybe Reddit shouldn’t be hosting a forum devoted to sharing images and videos of women being brutalized, so that Redditors can cackle over their victimization, make rape jokes, and whatever else they do there.
The idea that r/beatingwomen “might be next “ roused one racist, misogynist jailbait enthusiast to post this little manifesto.
He’s not trolling. If you look at his comment history you’ll see he’s completely sincere. (Actually, don’t look at his comment history. It’s horrifying. I’m not going to link to it.)
In case any one is wondering, r/beatingwomen is the subreddit that r/mensrights mod AnnArchist (a guy, despite the name) posted to on several occasions, because he considers r/beatingwomen-style “humor” to be hilarious.
Since this post made me despair, I clicked back over to the story about Foxie, the cat with cancer, and they’ve now raised over $1400 for her treatment. Feminist humans are cool.
Sigh. Glad I was born an old soul. So. Any petitions out there to deep six this one? Or maybe some legislation regarding posting this filth?
Some days I’d rather spend cleaning out an overflowing and poorly maintained restaurant grease trap than read what’s on the net
Ullere, jokes that rely on stereotypes are only funny to people who believe in the stereotypes. And if you make jokes using stereotypes, there is nothing secret about your misogyny, racism or cruelty.
I know “It’s just a joke” is supposed to be some sort of cover for the joke teller, but everyone really does know what you really are after they have heard you tell that kind of “joke”
Telling racist jokes makes you racist.
Also, water is wet.
Here’s another scary thought for people saying r/beatingwomen is “just a troll”:
It probably is, for most of the members.
But there’s almost certainly a few guys on there who actually no-joking have beaten women. And they get a community encouraging them and egging them on and telling them that what they do is okay, it’s funny, it’s normal. They get, intentionally or not, an abuser support community. One that makes them feel so safe, so confident, so “lots of guys do this,” so “no male juror would convict me, I can tell from the stories here that other guys know how it is,” so “these guys gave me all the ideas I need to justify this to myself” that they go out and beat up a woman.
There’s no joke that’s worth that.
@pillowinhell
Yes, http://www.change.org/petitions/remove-and-ban-rape-assault-groups-from-redditcom
Oops, didn’t realize petition had closed. Long day.
Ullere, so what if it’s trolling, you simpleton? It’s still bad.
Ok, I’m not even gonna even try to sugarcoat it…reading this shit does actually make me a little bit misandrist. I sincerely apologize to all the men here but everyday it’s getting much harder to just overlook this shit. I don’t believe it’s a minority because this attitude is reflective everywhere. I was just reading an article in regards to those tweets of women saying they’d let Chris Brown beat them and it was full of domestic violence jokes and men thinking those 25 women who were most likely joking means all women like to be beaten and har har what inferior bitches we are!
This is why many women are afraid of men they don’t know. This is why we are wary. I don’t care about your precious feeweeings. My safety comes first and until this attitude disappears I will regard you cautiously, because for all I know I could be riding home on the bus every night with the freak that made the OP post.
I’m not sure what difference it makes if it’s considered a “troll reddit” or not. It’s a subreddit devoted to people posting pictures and videos of real women who’ve been brutalized, and people making jokes, and saying other vile shit, about them. That’s pretty hateful.
No, it’s not connected to r/mensrights, but it is pretty horrible that one of the mods of that subreddit has posted violent videos there, and thinks it’s all terribly funny.
Oh, and here’s the whole post on the “no men’s rights stuff here” issue:
There’s a current petition, but it seems kind of moribund with only 6 signers (and it is also limited only to r/beatingwomen, unlike the other one which had a broader focus on banning these kinds of subreddits):
http://www.change.org/petitions/rbeatingwomen-remove-rbeatingwomen-from-redditcom
Sorry for the multiple posts. I am not a spambot! Just not at the top of my game…
I’m not sure what difference it makes if it’s considered a “troll reddit” or not. It’s a subreddit devoted to people posting pictures and videos of real women who’ve been brutalized, and people making jokes, and saying other vile shit, about them. That’s pretty hateful.
Seriously. I don’t give a shit if they’re trolls, I don’t care if they’ve never raised a hand in anger their whole miserable lives, they’re still having a good fucking laugh at real human suffering. It’s fucking vile.
What Holly said about giving cover to real abusers (if we assume that this is a bunch of asshole trolls).
The thing is, on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. You are what you present to the world, so the act of trolling makes you a troll
As an example I’ll point to this bit of Rape Apologia here on Manboobz, where, we didn’t get it, and jury nullification is all about reform a flawed system. Of course that’s not really what it does.
Just like this doesn’t really make fun of people, it says beating women is ok.
Which is wrong.
I think it’s a bit much to say that telling or laughing at a racist joke in any circumstance makes you a racist. If one Jew tells a Jewish joke to another Jew, in private, and they both laugh, does that make them anti-semites?
I absolutely agree that intent isn’t magic and one has to be careful that one’s joke is appropriate to the audience (and, of course, I also think that there are truly vile jokes that aren’t really appropriate in any context), but I think there are times and places where telling a racist joke is at least as much about poking fun at racism as it is about poking fun at members of a given race.
@Pecunium
Wow…Rad’s rationalization hamster is really something to behold, especially since it’s not a matter of voting not guilty on actual innocents, but on actual defendants who ARE guilty of rape.
@Polliwog: yeah I know what you mean. This is an example of racist jokes about the Irish.
I’d be upset but they are actually hilarious. It’s a little hard to insult the Irish to be fair.
You know, speaking as a Jewish person, this doesn’t happen so much. Even as a Jew, I can’t know that another Jew will be cool with it.
There’s Jewish humor that’s shared between Jews, but that’s a different thing–it doesn’t use “Jews suck” as the assumed premise of the joke. There’s an enormous difference between “why do Jews have big noses? air is free” and the kind of jokes you hear from Woody Allen or Mel Brooks.
I think his handle is the most pathetic thing of all. He couldn’t even get Patrick Bateman.
@Holly: “Jew gold” is often the joke when my Jewish friend is around.
“As long as you are a woman, you will be smaller than us, weaker than us”
I think Sam Colt rendered that a moot point 150 years ago.
Joanna – I’ve pretended to laugh at jokes like that when I didn’t want to start a fight.
Something to keep in mind.
I read up on some of the links to that shit. Ugh it hurt what’s left of my soul.
If someone could hook me up with a list of these guys RL names and a solid alibi of my whereabouts for the next few weeks, I’d appreciate it.
http://meloukhia.net/2009/07/hipster_racism.html
‘If someone could hook me up with a list of these guys RL names and a solid alibi of my whereabouts for the next few weeks, I’d appreciate it.’
A joke about harming another human being eh? That means that secretly you want to… or perhaps it’s just a joke.
@Holly: I actually don’t know any other Jews so I can’t say I’ve offended any. My friend doesn’t really give a toss. He often jokes that, being a left-handed, diabetic Jew, he’s a real minority in our group lol.