So Alexander Ryking is a Tumblr blogger and one of Tumblr’s community “editors” for politics. He thinks of himself as a liberal.
He is also a raging misogynist who regularly calls women “cunts” and tells feminists to “kill yourselves you feminazi twats.”
In recent days he’s turned his douchebag-o-meter up to 11. As a result, there’s now a petition up on Change.org to have him removed as a politics editor on Tumblr. It’s already gotten more than 3000 signatures, with several hundred new signatures added in the time it’s taken me to write this post.
Here’s unknowable woman, a frequent target of his cyber-wrath, with more details on his recent meltdown. (Read the post on her Tumblr blog for links to the evidence of his douchebaggery.)
Alexander Ryking, who has a history of attempting to silence women bloggers (he told Jess of STFUConservatives and the other “feminazis” to “go kill themselves” several months ago, and has also been rude to women of color but I haven’t been on Tumblr long enough to have personally witnessed that), defended The Amazing’s Atheist’s violent rape threats on Reddit by tagging his posts with “I support TAA.”
I and many, many other Tumblr users were disgusted by this, so we decided to tag our criticisms of Ryking that night with “Ryking’s banana republic”—a reference to his co-opting of [social justice] concepts, NOT a homophobic dig, and the person who coined it was a queer man anyway. Someone also wrote a few jokingly romantic lines about Ryking’s blind defense of TAA and new atheism, and Ryking interpreted this as homophobic and misandric…it wasn’t, but because I reblogged it, Ryking insists that I am now a homophobe, which is hilarious given my own sexual identity but whatever.
We also responded to some of his posts with pictures of extreme close-ups of our eyes.
Seriously. That is what this guy is calling “abuse.”
We did NOT threaten him, make personal attacks against his sexuality, tell him to go kill himself, send him rude messages, or commit any other acts that could reasonably be interpreted as the “cyberbullying” Ryking claims it is. I did temporarily change my URL to rykingsbananarepublic and I make no apologies for that. Why should I? Why shouldn’t a group of feminists and their allies be allowed to respond creatively to misogyny? The only actual cyberbullying that has taken place was TAA’s initial rape threats on Reddit; I wouldn’t even go so far as to claim Ryking’s tweets to me and other Twitter users are cyberbullying, though I leave it up to the other people who were insulted by him to label their experiences as bullying or not.
Anyway, a few nights later, I tweeted something in defense of Whitney Houston’s legacy, and suddenly there was Ryking going ballistic. He found me on Twitter, called me a cunt right off the bat, and insisted that I claimed Whitney Houston’s death was “more important than the death of 5,000 Syrians” (I didn’t! Here is what I actually said!). I had never exchanged tweets with this man before, and was confused about his sudden interest in my thoughts about Whitney Houston and Syria. Naturally, I responded, told him how wrong he was, and the next day I screencapped some of the things he said and posted them … I never expected that post to get the amount of notes it did, but I think that just goes to show how widespread the dislike for him is.
Ryking, for his part, has responded to the widespread criticism by striking the pose of a victim, and pretending that it is somehow all related to race. Apparently, the evil feminazis are impugning his white manhood, though he’s not white.
So-called feminists have subjected me to white-bashing comments (even though I’m Hispanic) and sexist attacks impugning my manhood (slash-fiction scenes featuring me and heterosexual men; being called faggot; being told to man-up; insults about my body;) by people who don’t realize I’m gay. After nearly two decades online, I learned early on that when you’re attacked, you defend yourself by attacking right back and just as viciously, if not more so. And that’s what exactly what I’ve done. …
What’s really at issue here is not my rude behavior but that you and others like you want to punish any man who refuses to conform to your rancid, misandrist orthodoxy by discounting everything he says and using his gender and race as the excuse for doing so. …
You don’t want me stripped of my editorial privilege based on my behavior but because I reject your sick, bigoted, misandrist (per)version of feminism.
Yep, apparently the dude who loves to call women “cunts” is the final arbiter of what is and what isn’t “true feminism.” Who knew?
I signed the petition. How about you?
He’s a nasty misogynist. Even if someone is homophobic towards you, it does not justify being a hateful misogynist.
I can see how something like that could easily slip into homophobia territory, esp. if the person saying it was a hetero.
However, again, that’s no fucking excuse for bigotry and gendered slurs against women. Also, way to hit the total self unawareness by complaining people are dismissing you based on gender when your entire “argument” against your opponents was calling them gendered slurs and threatening gendered violence.
He’s also talking about misandry as if that’s a thing, which is a surefire sign you are dealing with a fucking ignoramus and a social justice parody.
Hey, another dude who practices the NWO Theory of Conflict Resolution, AKA Escalation.
They should be nicer, they need all the allies they can get at this point.
With his charming temperament, is anyone surprised that he loves TAA?
Not a bit, Cassandra.
I second dsc’s comment. The whole thing looks messy, with a few bits of problematic things happening on one side and a whole shit-load of extremely problematic stuff on the other. No feminist should be using gendered insults as a common “debate” tactic, let alone an editor of a public space.
R.E. misandry… The tweet in question was “Wow, denying misandry. That’s up there with right-wingers denying climate change. It exists whether you admit it or not.”
Sure, misandry exists as a concept, but in all honesty I haven’t seen any of it (as a male) coming from real people. Plenty of dudes online insist that misandry is everywhere and so forth, but I honestly haven’t seen any prevalent misandry in my own life or online*. It’s always something the opposition insists exists everywhere, never something I’ve personally faced or seen. The most misandry I’ve seen is from the rhetoric that men are natural-born rapists/pedophiles (usually concluding that women should take extra precautions rather than that men should stop raping). And that isn’t coming from feminists.
I welcome any of our trolls to try to explain exactly where and when they see misandry out in the world, because I’m quickly approaching the conclusion that it’s a figment of the MRM’s imagination, invented out of whole-cloth and reinforced by the echo chamber and reinterpretations of real events under a fictitious model.
* I say prevalent because of course there are extremists out there. It’s not exactly something inundating our culture if its confined to a couple blogs on the internet.
The second anyone uses the term “feminazi” seriously I immediately know that anything they say is worthless.
This is the correct answer. The closest they come to approaching it is the draft, which isn’t a threat to any westerner. Outside the west, it’s really only a men’s problem in some dictatorships. African Warlords, for instance, will coerce *anyone* useful into their military, not just men…
After nearly two decades online, I learned early on that when you’re attacked, you defend yourself by attacking right back and just as viciously, if not more so.
That’s kind of a terrible life lesson. “An eye for an eye.” is not usually an effective way to communicate.
Last night someone threatened another feminist blogger w/ rape, and Ryking defended the person, saying it was justified because of our misandrist assault on him.
Oh, and let’s not forget his efforts to get me “fired” from my job as a clinic escort!
The closest I ever came to witnessing misandry personally was probably in my junior high history class. The teacher was a woman in her 50s or 60s that constantly made jokes about how much better the girls were than the guys, and inserted a lot of her politics into the history lesson.
Did it affect me outside of the class? No.
Did it affect me inside of the class? Honestly, no. It was all a bit of a joke.
At that age, I didn’t have any reference for gender politics, so my response was more “jeeze, she’s a weird lady” rather than “dammit, why can’t I get through one class without being belittled?” (insert appropriate discussion of privilege here) So when I see posts on various blogs bemoaning all the rampant misandry in the world, I can’t help but wonder where it all is?
Because the examples they give mainly look like rich people complaining that they pay such a higher tax rate than poor people. Complaining they don’t get some advantage that was given to a disadvantaged group to help close a gap between the groups.
Honestly it’s the gender roles associated with men and women that are the true source of any misandry out there. Men are expected to be big, strong, emotionless bastards who protect the fragile, doll-like women. Wanna know why drafts exist for men? Because women are considered too weak for military service. Wanna complain about the draft? Don’t do it while complaining that women are being hired for jobs over men that they aren’t able to handle (like, oh say… firefighter?)
Some people rail against feminism because it “feminizes men.” Well, that’s what you get when you set up gender roles to be opposites; breaking them down means taking on roles that were previously only for the other gender. It “masculinizes women” in the same way, which is the other objection.
THE SYSTEM YOU ARE DEFENDING CREATES THE PROBLEMS YOU ARE FIGHTING!
/rant, and back to smiling Kirby. (V^_^)
After nearly two decades online, I learned early on that when you’re attacked, you defend yourself by attacking right back and just as viciously, if not more so.
Ah… the NWO school of life. I find that being reasonable, with a dose of snark, and the quoting back of the opponent’s words is best.
I also try to match the flavor of my argument to the things they have said. One can be effective, and even “vicious” without being nasty. The needling comment that gets under their skin, so they reveal the actual nature of themselves is far better at keeping people from deciding one is the asshole, as well as winning allies, then resorting to the sorts of bullyragging used by third-rate high school coaches.
Kirby: There is nearly no walk of life where men are not systematically advantaged as a class; that’s why Misandry is basically a myth. The only time I’ve *ever* seen the term used by a scientist trying to examine things, it was because they were examining how a different axis of kyriarchy affected men specifically; it didn’t make sense to lump the oppressions together, with how different they were.
The most common examples aren’t really problems for them, and they’re the only people they care about. Less glibly, there’s prison sentences (MRAs hate black and brown people, but even if we pretended for two seconds they give a shit about anyone else, this is more likely due to priors, mitigating circumstances, less violent crimes…), the Draft (Nobody’s drafting just dudes until nukes are *gone*; spoiler alert, most places that maintain an actual draft where draftees are in danger also draft women), predominating dangerous jobs (which pay substantially better than similar-status and education jobs), and losing out on their kids in family court (Which studies show isn’t the case; dudes win more than they lose in custody cases, when you factor out all the people who don’t want custody)… the list goes on. Dudes are basically in the same place white people are. A few people actually dislike them, a lot more grumble about their privilege (Although not usually with those words), but they have no systematic disadvantages.
@Rutee:
On the draft, like I said before; the same people complaining about the draft are also complaining about how women shouldn’t be allowed on the battlefield because they are inherently weaker and not as capable as men. Same thing with dangerous jobs, most likely.
Problem is, the MRM is a reactionary movement to feminism, ultimately because the women have something the men don’t. It’s like white pride in response to black pride… Problem is they didn’t form the movement to combat any specific issue, so to a large degree they have to make up issues. -_- The issues that aren’t flat-out myths are a result of society’s gender roles; the very ones that they wish to enforce (because they don’t have a progressive mindset driving the movement).
All these misandry deniers…so blind to their own privilege.
Care to enlighten a misandry denier, magdelyns?
Aye, care to enlighten me as well?
It wouldn’t help you poor souls. You’re just to privileged to see you’re own oppression. No more of your womansplaining. No more of your backlash against men’s rights. It’s really time you guys started listening, instead of trying to deny your oppressive ways.
Are we 100% sure magdelyns isn’t an old school ED-style troll? Because that last comment was just too funny to be genuine.
@magdelyns:
“No more of your womansplaining.”
Sorry, man here. I’m mansplaining, thank you very much.
” It’s really time you guys started listening, instead of trying to deny your oppressive ways.”
I said ‘Care to enlighten a misandry denier, magdelyns?’ How read that I don’t want to listen and am denying… oppressive… wait, what oppressive ways?
Still waiting for some enlightenment, instead of hand-wavey “you wouldn’t believe me anyway” nonsense.
*how do you read that
@CassandraSays:
Oh, she be trolling alright. Can’t hurt to ask though… maybe she does have some all-powerful insight into misandry that I and most people I know and respect have missed all our lives.
shit madgelyn. i forgot how totally cool and above it all you were. i guess we should just take your smug cliches as fact since your clearly far too important to articulate anything.
It’s not my job to educate you about not being a misandrist or equality.
But… but… I’m a guy! Aren’t I not privileged according to you?