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.
Christ you’re a little shit. You just really must have your little rape and racism jokes.
Glass, I sort of have a moratorium on violent comments here, even if the people you’re talking about are reprehensible human beings, as they obviously are in this case.
Gotcha. Sorry, my apologies.
I don’t care if the vile turds at r/beating women are doing it “only as a joke”. They are horrible people if that’s how they get their kicks. I can’t even put into words how lowly I look upon the slime that said they made a beating children subreddit. I also won’t click on it to find out if it’s true and then lose all faith in humanity.
This guy’s comment basically says “we’re gonna beat you bitches up for taking away our child porn so watch out”
I hope this poor excuse for a human being is arrested, I truly do. That is my Valentine’s day wish. Make it happen Cupid, I’m sure you have a variety of skills other than shooting people with arrows.
I can’t speak for your friend. Maybe he really doesn’t mind.
Then again, maybe he expects no better, and figures any friends he has (I’m guessing you’re not in a real Jewish area if he’s the only Jew you know) will make hilarious “Jew gold” jokes so he’d better just put up with it if he wants any friends at all.
Maybe he doesn’t mind only because he’s so used to this stuff that it doesn’t sting anymore.
Maybe he doesn’t mind because he kinda hates Jews himself and likes to think that he’s not that kind of Jew, phew.
Maybe he doesn’t want to have an extended, aggravating, ultimately unproductive “but it’s a joke because I’m not really anti-Semitic” conversation with you.
I don’t know that any of these things are true. Just things you should be aware of.
—
Oh, okay, one more thing you should be aware of: my family actually had “Jew gold”! It was their life savings until it was confiscated by the Nazis.
“‘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.”
Thing is, once it is stated, it is not a secret anymore. Glass stated outright that zie felt like doing implied violence. Thus, not a secret! Now, it is probable that Glass will do nothing violent, but there is no secrecy about the implied desire to hurt people who threaten others.
Ullere, you really, really want it to be ok to be racist and misogynist, but it still is not ok.
No one is fooled when people frame things as a “joke” that are nasty and evil.
“Then again, maybe he expects no better, and figures any friends he has (I’m guessing you’re not in a real Jewish area if he’s the only Jew you know) will make hilarious “Jew gold” jokes so he’d better just put up with it if he wants any friends at all.”
Nope. He’s quite frank. If he doesn’t like, he makes sure we know about it.
“Oh, okay, one more thing you should be aware of: my family actually had “Jew gold”! It was their life savings until it was confiscated by the Nazis.”
That’s awful.
Okay seriously, you’re saying that because the one and only jewish person you know doesn’t care (that you’re aware of) that you joke about “Jew gold” then it’s somehow cool to joke about it? That is some bullshit.
@Snowy: No. Holly was implying that my friend secretly resented the Jew jokes but didn’t say anything because otherwise he’d have no friends or something.
Reading comments like that one is always sort of jarring to me. My first response is a sort of sick, “oh,” when I feel my stomach sink.
Then, I go, “no, no, that person is wrong. Not all men think of women this way. That is absurd.” I think of the men I know. They wouldn’t think of me that way, right?
I get sort of freaked out. What if they do?! What if the poster is right? I don’t want to leave my apartment, fuck people, they suck, they want to and they will hurt me. They see me as an object and treat me like one, and I am right to fear them.
But in the end, I am reasonable. This person is not correct. This just isn’t how most men think. I can’t believe that any more than I can believe them when I hear them prattling on about women and hive minds. Men don’t have a hive mind, either. I know this. I need to remember this.
Unfortunately, these people do exist. When I go out to the grocery store tonight, I will be remembering that. That while they are a minority, they are also real. And I will feel shitty about that; maybe a little scared, but I’ll be thinking of it like horror-movie paranoia. It’s not real, it’s just some asshole on the internet. When strange men talk to me, that little tidbit will be floating around in the back of my mind. Of course, that’d make me a misandrist, but according to this fellow, perhaps I should be more of one. It’s not that one comment changed my sunny, happy outlook to something dark and fearful, but rather, that I’ve been hearing this sort of thing from a lot of different sources for a long time – and the way I’ve been treated by certain men (and a few times women, but they are unconcerned with such things) suggests that maybe they’re more right than I want them to be, and I have to be more careful.
Joanna – Imagine if you respected someone even though they didn’t demand it!
Imagine how cool that would be.
I know I’m coming down harsh here, but when you only know one Jewish person and you make anti-Semitic jokes whenever he’s around, there is basically no way you are doing that in a spirit of friendship and inclusion.
Let me put it this way: even if he is not hurt at all by your jokes, I can 100% guarantee you he is not happier that you are making them. They are not helping. I do not know a single Jew on the face of the Earth who has had the experience of hanging out with gentiles and wishing they’d make some anti-Semitic jokes already.
So I don’t think you’d have too much to lose by just backing off the “Jew gold” hilarity.
“there is basically no way you are doing that in a spirit of friendship and inclusion.”
Actually it is. I guess it’s this Irish thing again. We slag each other off the whole time.
Oh sweet sufferin’ lord. Who the hell needs MRAs when a female “pundit” on FAUX news can set back the clock a century or two?
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/02/13/424239/fox-women-miliary-expect-raped/
(It’s a segue, I know. Quite off-topic, I suppose. Maybe I ain’t playin’ by the rules? But this sh*t is so… sooooo… f*cked.)
This was what I was responding to Joanna. So uncool.
So wait, you’re saying that you don’t find joking about “Jew gold” to be funny? Because it sort of sounds like you’re trying to say that it’s a totally fine thing to do. Putting aside for a minute that the “my friend of X minority group” is cool with me being an asshole about them is like the oldest derailing trick in the book and giving you the benefit of the doubt on that, Holly was explaining some of the many reasons why your friend might not appear to mind that sort of thing, and secretly resenting your jokes but not saying anything was only one of them. “Maybe he doesn’t mind because he kinda hates Jews himself and likes to think that he’s not that kind of Jew, phew.” is just a plausible.
Oh, and the last time you were talking about how this is just something Irish people do didn’t another Irish person here say something like, uh, no it isn’t?
Holly, I’ve noticed these kinds of jokes tend to pop up a lot where there aren’t many Jews. I’m not excusing the jokes at all, but I do think that ignorance plays a huge role.
At least that’s what I tell myself now that I’m in TX.
if you think hurting people is funny, you have a problem, full stop. go get that worked on.
I don’t know, I’m not Irish, so I’m not going to assume I know what Irish people are and aren’t comfortable with.
ahem
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.
Oh, sorry – my bad for being unclear. I didn’t mean “Jew talking to random unknown Jew” – the likely reason that Jews were the example that first popped into my head is that one of my best friends and his best friend from childhood are both Jews who do comedy for a living, and when the two of them get together, there tends to be a fair amount of riffing on their supposed love of gold, need to please their mothers, and so on.
I also think I may be using the term “racist” differently – I tried to make the distinction before between “jokes that can be called racist” and “jokes that are really vile.” My argument is just that there are contexts – such as two Jews, neither of whom make more than $40,000 a year, joking between themselves about how they love to hoard their vast sums of money – in which a joke playing on racial stereotypes is more about saying “racism, isn’t it ridiculous” than “thus-and-such racial group, aren’t they terrible.” Perhaps it makes more sense to call the former “jokes playing on racial stereotypes” and the latter “racist jokes,” in which case I’d absolutely agree that there really isn’t a way to find racist jokes funny without being racist.
“Oh, and the last time you were talking about how this is just something Irish people do didn’t another Irish person here say something like, uh, no it isn’t?”
Oh really? Maybe my entire life experience was a lie then?
“Putting aside for a minute that the “my friend of X minority group” is cool with me being an asshole about them is like the oldest derailing trick in the book “
Seriously? I don’t think he’d still be talking to me if he thought I was an asshole. He has plenty of other friends too.
Hellkell – Yeah. The whole thing about “don’t Jews tell anti-Semitic jokes to each other?”… no. We really don’t. At least not any of the Jews I’ve hung out with.
Or if we do, it’s a different type. It’s “neurosis and guilt” jokes, but not “big nose” jokes. It’s “our religious rituals are kinda goofy” jokes, but not “hoarding the gentiles’ money” jokes. It’s “big quirky families” jokes, but not “we killed Jesus” jokes. And it is fucking never Holocaust jokes.
I’m not entirely sure how I’d feel about a non-Jew getting in on the “Jewish mothers give guilt trips!” sort of humor, but I’m very sure how I feel about “Jew gold,” because, no, as a matter of fact, we don’t even say that to each other.
” one of my best friends and his best friend from childhood are both Jews who do comedy for a living, and when the two of them get together, there tends to be a fair amount of riffing on their supposed love of gold, need to please their mothers, and so on.”
Well this is sort of what I’m talking about. There’s a difference between being racist and making jokes about a culture. Racism means hatred. Jokes do not.
Polliwog – Okay, I sort of know what you mean.
I think it is possible to make fun of anti-Semitism without being anti-Semitic, but you have to be real clear about it.
Merely being anti-Semitic, but it’s a joke because everyone knows I’m not really anti-Semitic, so it’s so totally ironic that I say anti-Semitic things!–that does not qualify in my book as real clear.
@Snowy: This guy pretty much explains it all.
If the joke is “racism is so absurd, they think we’re rich Jews and actually we’re broke!” that’s one thing. If the joke is “lol I said a racist thing but you can’t be mad at me because I’m not racist,” that is QUITE another.