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 amazed “Nathan” got away with so many “well [subgroup] of women is oppressed because [subgroup], not because women” comments without anyone once mentioning the word “intersectionality.” …OTOH, I respect any decision not to inundate him with complex, nuanced concepts when he’s still struggling with the 101 vocabulary.
…
On a totally unrelated note, I’ve been pondering the mystery that is “Steak and Blowjob Day,” and I have to know: what the hell is so special about steak?
It’s not particularly expensive, it doesn’t taste particularly interesting, and in social status it’s pretty much dead center on the meat-cuts scale. I’d never have guessed that steak, of all meat cuts, would rank alongside oral sex. Does steak have some kind of magic re-masculating powers men need after a hard day co-existing with Teh Laydeez(TM) and that I just can’t possibly understand because I am one of Teh Laydee Borg? Or do some people just like steak that much and that’s all there is to it?
Dani, I think the steak thing goes back to mammoth days. It’s all manly and shit.
Nathan wrote, “Dracula, I don’t agree the assumption that women are universally considered to be ‘the inferior gender’. This goes back to my first post. Men are held to be superior in certain spheres, women in others- and this serves as the springboard for most misogyny and misandry in our society. Men have (or had, in the past) things quantitatively ‘better’, but there were and are areas where they were and are considered not adept. It’s pretty simple.”
This would be great, except even skills that are supposedly in a women’s sphere are still dominated by men. In cooking, the top chefs are more often male than female. GOOD had an article just today about how there are fewer women in writing than men. There are more male politicians and CEOs in the US than women–or do you think politicis and running businesses are gendered skills?
And Real Men only eat meat, Dani. Any man who willingly eats vegetables or is, dog forbid, a vegetarian/vegan, is an emasculated pussy-begging mangina.
The fact that men die, on average, slightly earlier than women is not at all related but is pure misandry on the part of…er…the Grim Reaper.
(Does anyone else remember the SCTV SLUT about a restaurant called Beef and Brews or something like that?)
SKIT. Skit skit skit. Not slut.
I swear I will someday post something that isn’t completely incomprehensible.
I actually love steak. If you like meat, it can totally be up there with sex.
Steak is nice, but a good simmered beef stew is… ahh.
Steak isn’t that expensive? It rarely makes its way into my house, and only the really tough cuts at that. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that steak as a special meal is tied to working class realities. You know, the class that’s always been seen as real men who dig ditches and build stuff. Its interesting how certain meats got positioned in terms of status and price.
After all, any woman can raise a flock of chickens.
Well, to say “steak is not expensive” is taking steak as a monolith when really there is a plurality of diverse types and price levels at play. There is no single steak that speaks for all steak. You can probably find say a three quarter pound chuck steak at your grocer for 4 bucks. For me there’s nothing like getting a cheap chuck and frying it up on the foreman. However, if you want to get strip sirloin, or filet mignon, etc., you’re going to pay substantially more.
At any rate, I shouldn’t have to explain the nuances of stake erasure to you! Read a book!
Note: I am not endorsing these stereotypes about gender, food, and sex. I’m just trying to explain where some of the appeal of steak and blow job day might come from.
There is a certain type of machismo where some men put red meat, especially steak, up on a pedestal as the ultimate manly food. It’s more expensive than chicken and pork, so it is seen as something special. Most people I know, including my own family, has a tight grocery budget, so you only buy steak for special occasions. If you can only buy a small amount of steak and then give more of it to the man, it’s like you’re making him the king of the castle.
Another thing about steak is it is best cooked on a BBQ grill, so you’re likely to serve it at neighborhood parties. It’s a way to impress your neighbors that you bought fancy meat for them rather than cheaper ground chuck to make burgers. So yes, it’s fair to say that for some people, steak is a status symbol.
Fresh fish and seafood is hard to come by and expensive in the midwest, since we’re far from any ocean. You can have fresh fish like bass from ponds, but it’s not as good. However, cows are everywhere on nearby farms, so it’s more readily available. A lot of people have a deep freeze, and fill it with 1/4 or 1/2 of a cow from a butcher once a year.
It’s true that read meat is unhealthy and high in cholesterol. That’s probably part of its appeal to the men that buy into the machismo image. It’s seen as manly to say “Who cares about healthy food? I like meat, potatoes, beer, and cigars!” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with meat, potatoes, beer, and cigars, but just saying that they’re symbols of macho defiance to having a healthy lifestyle. On the other side of that is the idea that eating salad and exercising are feminine and therefore inferior.
Sometimes men like to bond over their steak rules, like “A high quality steak doesn’t need A-1” or “If your steak doesn’t have red in the center, it’s overcooked”. That rule is another machismo thing, where men can show off how tough their GI tracts are for eating and digesting steak medium-rare. If a man wants his steak well done, it’s seen as weak and womanly.
Sorry to be so wordy. I just wanted to add some thoughts into why a “Steak and Blow Job Day” might be considered such a big deal for a certain type of cis straight man. The steak is a way for him to show manliness and be the king of the castle. The blow job is his way to feel powerful that a woman is focusing on his sexual pleasure instead of having sexual needs of her own. I realize that many women love giving blow jobs, but I’m only describing a stereotype of a man that feels powerful when a woman gives him one begrundgingly. Those same types of men would probably slut shame a woman if she showed how much she enjoys giving head.
Nathan seriously just used the term “career women” as if he lives in 1950s suburbia, and then has the gall to pretend that he is an expert on classism. I’ve lived for small portions of time without running water, or without electricity, I’ve eaten expired food that was slated for pigs, And, yes, the women of that economic class are still poorer and still subject to sexism. Fucking asshole, don’t claim to care about poor women, queer women, trans women, women of the global south, etc. when you only count rich western white able bodied cis hetero women as real women when it comes to discussions of sexism. All women are subjected to sexism, not just those closest in privilege to the most privileged men.
Well, way to prove your earlier claim that you weren’t dismissing women’s oppression was a lie. Also, that above is patently wrong. The poor often outnumber the rich, are seen as inferior, and given a specific inferior social role. Ethnic minority workers are exploited. This relationship is sometimes put in compatibilist terms as well. It was a pretty damned common argument in the anti-bellum south that slavery was black people’s natural place, that black people were suited for hard labor while white people were more suited to management/intellectual things. There were counties in the south that were over 90% black in the last slave census. So, would you argue that racism didn’t exist in the US slave system? Compatibilist systems can be every bit as brutally oppressive as exclusionist ones. By your standard, even the most strict cast system could never involve privilege of the upper castes or oppression of the lower ones, because the lower castes have an expected “place” and “role” in the system, we’ll just pretend that this role isn’t deemed inferior and given less rights than the others…
Are you sure this isn’t more a steak snob thing, rather than a gender thing? It’s not so much about the toughness of your GI tract than the fact that a rare steak is jucier than a well-done one.
*Head desks* Yes, steak is a status symbol if you aren’t at least middle class (and possibly sans kids there). At least try to remember that some people struggle to get meat in their diets at all.
Yes, steak is a class symbol. Yes, steak is considered “manly”. But I never heard of *how* a steak was cooked being gendered. Usually the people talking about eating rare steak aren’t doing it in the same vein that people doing beer bongs are, which *is* about the toughness of your innards.
… wow. I am quibbling over a very tiny detail. o.o
@ Quackers: “At least men are considered to have authority and control.”
I wanted to repost this because it bears repeating. The “ideal man” has to deny loads of his emotional reality and other super shitty things. But he has. power. And is allowed to express his opinions about things and people will listen to him. In order for a woman to become “more ideal,” she has to have fewer opinions, become more passive, stupid, and deferring. The ideal woman sits there and looks pretty and takes care of the children and never complains. See, recent atheist bullshit where young pretty girls were taken apart for the crime of expressing opinions on the internet.
The construction of the “ideal woman” is inherently misogynistic, because it robs women of their power and voice.
The doneness of the steak seems like it would also be a class thing, since those who can afford to buy fresher meat don’t have to be as concerned about pathogens living on the meat and can therefore cook it less.
Molly, I guess that could also be seen as steak snob thing, too. I guess I was thinking along the lines of guys who make jokes that their steak should say “Moo” when you cut into it, and then they laugh and high five each other. I’ve even heard guys make jokes about how they would pay for eating rare steak later in their bathroom (ewww). However, the A-1 rule probably would be more a steak snob thing than a macho thing. I’ve been teased for putting sauce on a dinner steak, so women aren’t exempted from these rules either.
Another way for some men to make steak into a macho thing is by making a contest of how much they can eat. The restaurant The Big Texan with their 72 oz. steak contest is an example of this. Some women also like to do these steak eating contests, but it is more popular with men.
The media plays a huge role in the gender policing with food, too. I still remember the Burger King commercial for the Texas double whopper called “I am Man, Hear me Roar!”. The commercial explicitly says men want more beef, and that woman eat quiche and “chick food”.
I feel like the stance on pathogens in steak is usually glossed over with blissful ignorance. Do people care as much about raw steak as they do raw eggs?
Yeah, I think there’s a difference between steak snob discourse and manly man steak discourse. It all reminds me of the whole 1994, Dennis Leary, politically incorrect shit. Basically it’s really rad to eat a shit diet. Backlash against that whole “red meat is bad for you” craze that swept the nation in the 1990s. It’s manly to do traditional things once the “establishment” or the “liberal nannies” have said that they’re bad, or unhealthy. It’s a way of asserting one’s power. Relatively benign flouting of established authorities such as eating red meat can be a low risk, high reward way of asserting one’s masculinity.
Though really, even rare red meat can be part of a balanced diet.
Who knew that I would get smacked in the face with the kyriarchy during a discussion about steak? Food is so COMPLICATED. o.o
Well, I know my grandmother does. I think generally the concern is ranked, in ascending order: fruit/veggies, beef, pork, chicken, eggs.
With modern refrigeration and meat packing techniques it’s certainly not as big of a concern as it used to be
I feel like the stance on pathogens in steak is usually glossed over with blissful ignorance. Do people care as much about raw steak as they do raw eggs?
I do, but then I’m probably the exception rather than the norm – my mother is a biology professor and had a jar in her lab when I was a kid containing a 7-foot-long tapeworm that had been removed from someone’s gut and then donated to the university. That sort of thing makes a bit of an impression, and left me pretty permanently unable to stomach meat that was still red in the middle.
Food preferences based on gender are not good for anyone’s health, as far as I can tell. One more way the patriarchy really sucks.
It was “Beef and Booze”!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxOS3B13Yt8
SCTV: on this shit back in the 70s!
Anyway, back when I ate meat I loved rare steak, FWIW. Don’t really miss it now.
@Molly- As a Jew, I spend a LOT of time thinking about food. What I can eat, what I can’t eat, when I can and can’t eat at all. In pretty much every society it’s a marker of class, identity, and celebration. Food is effing fascinating, and if you want me to start leaving food ethnographies here I totally will 😀