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?
I’m not even sure what that screenshot was supposed to prove other than that FF has always written like a drunk cat who just found a keyboard in the middle of a pile of tissues.
[blockquote]I’ve rarely seen a female gymnastics coach. That’s a job where a predatory male has a lot of opportunity, but it doesn’t seem to stop people letting them coach their daughters.[/blockquote]
Interesting. Way back when I coached recreational level gymnastics, out of 3 different clubs, there was 1 male coach. He co-coached the preschoolers with me and they decided part way through the 2nd session I was there to have him take over the boys’ class from me. Those were his only classes
MRAL has made another thread about his shit, he’s worse than Michael Bolton
One nice thing about MRAL: For the life of him, he can’t sock without eventually admitting it.
I also just want to extend my sympathy to all the people who have suffered actual abusive situations and are now getting triggered by his behavior.
I’m a guy who has had a few dangerous jobs (soldier, ditch digger, projectionist [low on the danger scale, except that rewinders can break your arm, projector bulbs can explode, and if the fans fail you die of ozone poisoning]).
I liked them all (ditch digging the least). It didn’t occur to me that, “women refuse to do this and make me risk my life for them.” I did them because I wanted to. I really liked being a soldier. I even enjoyed my time in theater (and I hated it, life is complicated, and so is soldiering).
I have dead friends from soldiering. I’ve got them from 1993, to the present; peacetime soldiering and wartime. I have people who died in stupid shit accidents, and some who died from being in the wrong place at the right time. I know people who went down swinging, and people who were in accidents no one would believe who had been in an Army.
Some of them piss me off. None of them make me angry at women. People like Meller; they piss me off, because they say the women who joined me in that way of life; calling if you will, were freaks. Worse, Meller says those women are making things worse. Not a bit of it.
I don’t want slackers, or morons in uniform. I don’t want people who don’t want to be there. I want competent people who are there because they enjoy it. I want to know that I can trust the troopie to my right, and the troopie to my left to care about me as they care about themselves; because they can do the same with me.
I can’t say my best days are behind me; because the world is a wonderful place and it’s full of wonderful things but there isn’t anything which will ever be any more clear, focused and brillant than some of the things I did in the Army. There have been things which were as clear, focused and brilliant. I expect to have things which are.
But not a single bit of it, from the pain of basic training, to the agony of DLI, to the fear, horror, joys, stupidities, frustrations and scars of Iraq, nor the pathos, bathos and tragedy of Madigan is to be laid against anyone; and particularly not women.
People say, “thank you for your service,” and I rarely know what to say. If I know them I say, “thank you”, because, “you’re welcome,” seems flip. If I don’t know them I make polite noises and try to get away.
If I think they are jerks, and it’s a way for them to be jingoisitc, I say, “I didn’t do it for you.”
Which is the most truthful response. I joined the Army because I wanted to. I stayed in because I enjoyed it.
Goddamn, this thread.
I’m extending sympathies to everyone who’ve suffered abusive behavior, too.
And FactFinder…back to being a pretentious asshat, I see.
Also, I think the Ryking petition has reached 5,000 by now. Last time I signed, it had over 4,500 sigs. As a Tumblr user, that shit isn’t acceptable.
Ryking is gone as editor now, FYI.
Hooray!
I dunno, I’d rather have the privilege of not being at such huge risk for rape that terror of a stranger approaching you at 2:00 AM is actually pretty reasonable. (And no one gets pepper sprayed for just that. What a strawman.)
I didn’t say it was better. Just different. I shall of course avoid hyperbole in future if you thought I was serious. Perhaps it was an ill chosen phrasing in the face of OHNOES INNOCENT MEN GETTING SPRAYED hysteria so common to trying to silence people’s very real need to be reticent in the face of stranger intrusion.
It’s still a privileged to be considered inherently more trustworthy, even if there’s a bit of benevolent sexism going on. I’d happily take a rape and assault free world over the advantage it gives me, and of course there’s always a downside – for example people will cheerfully leave their kids in my custody, but they’ll also assume I’m a default mother with magical baby competence on account of the cis-gendered assumptions, but I will by sheer force of practice, get better with kids, and advantage not given to my kid brother. And I consider being good with human spawn a non-gender specific advantage, something it’s a bad thing that thirteen year old boys are not also coaxed into with small cash payments.
On that front we’re basically arguing this with personal anecdotes regarding the childcare thing, someone who’s still attached to a university needs to google scholar-up something peer reviewed and settle if the cultural trend is to have a negative justification for why males don’t get roped into as much childcare as well as benevolent sexism towards women. I’m quite sure this has been studied and I’m quite sure that we could settle this a lot better than “In my experience…”
But back you my point about night roaming fears- strange men are also going to find me safer at 2:00 AM. Ignoring sexual assault for the moment, I’m also less likely to roll him for his wallet, or even mug another woman. There is a privilege in not being expected to be a thug or to even have thuggery facilitated towards me. Small comfort that I was expected to be docile when it chafes against my nature, but presumed harmlessness is not something I’m going to be entirely revolted by.
,When you go back to examining poor women and poor men, the poor men will still be better off. Because misandry doesn’t really exist as its own force.
Aren’t there like, significantly more black men incarcerated than black women in the US? I’m not saying it’s nicer to be a poor woman, I’m saying that it’s not fair or helpful to say that the group with the most privilege (men) can’t be nasty to its own gender based on the same gender? I mean we’re talking about a pretty broad range of groups. I’d sure as heck rather be a male Indian lower caste slum dweller, but I’m not sure, given growing up in what passed for poverty in Canada, I’d trade my lot in life for an equivalent male.
It’s basically a matter of picking your choice of awfulness, a lottery ticket where winning is amazing, but losing involves being devoured by inter-male competition or being female and being stuck as a prize, a ghost or treated as an animal. I’d rather the autonomy to guide my own fate, but even as I have to deal with the ongoing tendency to treat me as an acquisition (inherent in pretty much every culture) I’m not able to ignore that things are pretty crappy for other people too, sometimes for different reasons.
Misandry, as a thing, hardly discredits misogyny as a more awful thing. Are you arguing with me or with the people going “yes but, anti-male sexism so shut up!!1111!”? Because otherwise I don’t even see a disadvantage in respecting it as part of a larger puzzle, which is the seething, fetid mass that is sexism.
Good:
Calling men dicks/dickhead/cockmunchers
Bad:
Calling women cunts
I’m sure the conversation has moved WAY past this, as I spend my Saturday catching up with ManBoobz, but I just need to point out, Nathan, that you really need to talk to your union rep. If you’re working a full-time job and not getting regularly paid, you’ve got a solid grievance.
Nathan’s an MRAL sockpuppet. That was all bullshit.
re: “Steak”
As a cut, it doesn’t exist. It’s a generic term for, “slab o’ beef”.
It runs from about 3 bucks a lbs, to about 30 (excluding truly outrageous things like genuine Kobe). There is a wealth of difference between them all.
Depending on the cut it can be sublime on it’s own (a well aged porterhouse), or need a fair bit of work to be more than mediocre (filet mingon). Anyone who is in the NYC area, and wants a well done steak should let me know. I can work inside pretty much any budget, and make a tasty meal for two for anything from about $25 up (for two people, the upper limit is, alcoholic beverages not included, about 150 dollars).
The trick is knowing what the meat needs.
Best part of MRAL’s latest sockpuppeting attempt was the idea that working 36-45 hours a week was super extreme and hard and something that no woman would be doing.
Hey remember that time Joanne Rowling had to use the initials “JK” rather than her first name on Philosopher’s Stone since the publisher said little boys wouldn’t want to read it otherwise?
Yep, women are all up in that publishing shit, beating the men away with their Kindles.
MRAL, could you be any more pathetic?
Just caught up with the entire thread: Holly, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that stalker-y horribleness, and Ami, I’m sorry to hear about your father. My dad’s the same way, and it’s awful.
I highly doubt that he actually has contacted a therapist.
I’m arguing with you. Misandry isn’t an independent force; that’s what privilege means. In as few words as possible, black people have the privilege of saying the n-word, and in a sparing number of neighborhoods aren’t treated with suspicion. That doesn’t mean white people suffer from racism.
Let’s take your childcare examples. Your brother didn’t get kids fobbed on him, and has substantially lower childcare expectations placed on him in any relationship he enters into.
Or hell, this. Do you really think a white dude dressed middle class or up is going to have anyone scared of him unless they’re worried about rape?
Do you know how to look beyond the most surface level shit? Because at least when MRAs raise this as an example of ‘privilege’, they have the ‘sense’ to posit the pussy pass. Because unless you’re going to claim that either women are advantaged as a gender in criminal court, what you are actually saying is that women commit less crime. When the alternative is starving…
And this is why I fucking oppose this idiotic set of narratives. They’re not equivalent. They’re not even in the same fucking ballpark. Being male isn’t a barrel of fucking monkeys, but it’s head and shoulders above being a woman in society.
What idiotic claim to privilege can we make next? Hetero relationships aren’t held to the same high standard as homo ones, so homos are privileged to have better (Surviving) relationships? Ooo, or how about hispanics have better knowledge of where to buy ‘authentic’ mexican food! THE POOR TOTALLY KNOW HOW TO OPERATE ON A SMALLER BUDGET GUYS, THIS TOTES AWESOME LIFE SKILL FORCED BY NECESSITY IS A PRIVILEGE.
Oh, by the way, if you check back through the threads, you’ll see how much ‘misandry’ comes up in peer reviewed literature. Which I’m guessing you will suddenly not care about. Ithiliana and Flib showed the starkness of results. It was a few thousand entries, to 17. And those 17 entries were, as I said, modifiers to other axes of oppression.
Raving Researcher enters bearing data:
I did a quick search and got some results from the biggest SOC Index–I couldn’t get bibliographic list of the 19 articles on misandry because of internet glitches (I’m at home, proxy server is acting up, maybe due to rain).
SocINDEX is the database I used; here’s the information on it:
Misandry: NINETEEN
Misogny: 220 results
Sexism 3129 results
Exclude the search terms “girls,” “women,” and “femimism” and you end up with 1014
“Reverse sexism”: 1 result
Male ordeal: role crisis in a changing world
Authors: Skeji, Eric
Rabkin, Richard
Skjei, Eric W
Source:
Male ordeal: role crisis in a changing world; 1981, 247p
Document Type:
Book
Subject Terms:
*FEMINISM
*PSYCHOLOGY
*MEN
Author-Supplied Keywords:
Feminism – U.S
Men – Social change
Men – U.S
Men – U.S. – Psychology
Men’s Issues
Sex Roles [Sociological Aspects]
Sociology Of Men
Abstract:
The authors explore the negative effects of shifts in women’s roles on men. Based on interviews with 31 people, Skjei and Rabkin found that, despite being branded as gender imperialists, men are sensitive to women’s changes and are distressed by ‘the new misandry’ of the feminists. Such ‘repressive radicalisation’ tends to regard men as enemies rather than as allies in the women’s cause. This ‘reverse sexism,’ which seeks to castigate men for the alleged oppression of women must be done away with. In the quest for selfhood each sex must enlist the help of the other. Contrary to the general belief, men are committed to monogamy and to being actively involved parents. The authors conclude that men need to rediscover a sense of dignity and pride without making any assumptions about women and their roles.
Notes:
Includes index; Bibliography: p. 246-247
Publisher Information: Putnam, New York.
Accession Number:
SN084353
Database:
SocINDEX with Full Text
Okay, well that’ll teach me* not to comment before I read the whole thread.
*Probably not.
Good:
Calling men dicks/dickhead/cockmunchers
Duly noted.
On prisons:
First, you have to look at what people in US prisons are generally in for. The majority are in for nonviolent crimes (about 89%). Drug crimes and immigration violations are at the top of the list, though it should be noted that some stats only count immigration violations which result in being housed in prison and not the substantial numbers housed in immigration specific detention centers.
When you look at drug usage rates, white men have the highest drug usage rates (with some studies finding similar usage of some drugs by native americans). They use drugs at higher rates than black and latino men. So, the fact that black and latino men are incarcerated for drug use at far, far higher rates than white men suggests a discrepancy in enforcement, rather than “crimes”. However, women of all races statistically use drugs less (they also deal less, and have lower criminal records) though you see similar patterns with white women using more drugs than black and latino women and most studies show a discrepancy in incarceration for drugs between white women and black and latino women as well. Black and latino women, including black and latino mothers, are overrepresented in the prison and criminal supervision population as well (it’s worth noting that black and latino women are even more overrepresented in probation supervision than black and latino men, compared to white women and white men respectively, because they often plea in order to avoid felonies to prevent loss of welfare benefits for themselves, their children, and their families).
Black women still have lower average incomes and lower average net worth compared to black men as well.
So, while it is technically true that men commit more crime, which men are being punished is a rather specific set of groups, and women of those groups tend to get hit harder as well.
Women are not oppressed. Most non feminist women would agree that women are treated better than men.
No, not even most non feminist women would agree with that.