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.)
This is Foxie. She belongs to Noah Brand from No Seriously What About Teh Menz. Here’s the situation:
She’s got a loud purr, an extremely pettable coat, and a case of what the vet describes as “very treatable” cancer. Without treatment, the tumor in her sinus cavity will continue to slowly grow until it kills her. With treatment, she’s got plenty of life left in her.
Noah needs money to pay for the surgery. Go here for more details, and a link to a page where you can make donations.
EDITED TO ADD: Money raised! Foxie will get treatment!
At some point, you’ve probably all heard some douchebag offer some version of the following bit of misogynist humor: You shouldn’t call a woman a bitch because that’s an insult … to female dogs!
A traditionalist Christian named Walter Allen Thompson has expanded this dumb joke into an even dumber essay. And he seems to literally believe it. As he explains in the essay, which has been posted on the Very Dumb Government blog (and which I ran across thanks to a link from our pal MarkyMark):
[W]hen some of you call a woman a “bitch” think about what you are saying. The word “bitch” means a female dog. So if you are going to use the word with its true meaning, you would actually be insulting female dogs, because the dogs have better behavior than many women. … I would never insult my dog by calling Gloria Allred a “bitch”. … I would call her a feminist but not a bitch. The feminist movement has made many of our women unseemly wenches.
Walter clearly holds a much higher opinion of his dog:
I love my bitch and I don’t want to say anything to offend her. My bitch is sweet, my bitch is lovable, my bitch is kind, my bitch is considerate, and she hardly causes me any trouble.
And, and as we all know, ladies is trouble:
A dog will give a man unconditional love; whereas, a woman may or may not keep you around depending upon the prevailing winds. I don’t have to buy my dog a food dish lined with jewels…. My dog doesn’t run up a charge account at Macy’s, and she doesn’t spend $50.00 to do her nails. My dog doesn’t take drugs, drink alcohol, or crash my brand new car.
I don’t know from dogs, but if my cat were actually capable of any of these things, she would do them. That’s part of the charm of cats. They’re tiny little monsters – selfish, self-absorbed, amoral creatures we let into our homes because they’re cute, they’re fascinating, and they’re too small to kill us. Not that mine doesn’t try.
I wouldn’t put up with that from a human being, but I put up with it from my cat because she’s a cat, and had a rough childhood (she was abandoned) and doesn’t know any better. Generally speaking, people expect different things from their pets than from their romantic partners.
Well, not this guy:
All my dog needs is a little love, attention, and her food. Overall, the quality of life with my dog has far exceeded any relationship I have had with any woman. The value of any relationship depends upon unconditional love, and that’s more evident with my dog.
“Unconditional love” sounds nice in theory, but in practice as most of us know it’s really a pretty shitty idea. If someone behaves in a way that is unlovable – attacks you, deliberately poops on the couch, starts reading A Voice for Men — you’re not obligated to keep loving them. Loyalty is, by and large, a good thing, and most of us are willing to cut those we love a lot of slack, but no one should be expected to put up with intolerable behavior in the name of unconditional love. (Also, people sometimes fall out of love. I know, shocking.)
People demand a bit more from their loved ones than dogs do, and that’s a good thing. Also, people know things that dogs don’t, and that’s also good. Hitler’s dog loved him. But then again Hitler’s dog didn’t know he was Hitler. (Hitler returned this unconditional love by having poor Blondi killed just before he killed himself.)
Of course, our boy Walter knows that most love is not unconditional. Indeed, as we saw above, he’s got a long list of conditions — some reasonable, some not — that women will have to meet before he’ll be willing to even consider them over his dog. Here are some more of his conditions, which his dog fulfills but most women (in his mind) won’t:
She doesn’t mess with my mind; doesn’t say. She doesn’t tell me she loves me today, but tomorrow she wants a divorce. My dog doesn’t pole dance at drunken parties. My dog doesn’t pick up “stud muffins” at bars. My dog doesn’t make porno films. My dog doesn’t take me to court (you lawyers..don’t get any ideas) and she doesn’t make any unreasonable demands. It is a perfect relationship as I don’t have to entertain any of her relatives. My dog is my friend and not my adversary.
It’s a pretty revealing list. He’s upset not only by infidelity, but also by women changing their mind about things – “say[ing] yes today and no tomorrow.” (Saying “no” to what? Sex? Does he think he deserves the right to rape his wife?) His idea of a “perfect relationship” seems to be one in which he doesn’t have to deal with a woman’s wants, or desires, or even her relatives.
Walter rails against feminists and feminism, but it’s clear that he also has issues with traditional women actually expecting him to fulfill his role in a traditional male-breadwinner marriage.
If you want to know where you stand with a woman, just run out of money. If you have a woman that stays with you when you’re broke or in a setback, then you have a good one.
Here’s a hint: if you don’t want a woman to expect you to provide for her, don’t marry a woman who expects you to provide for her.
Also: try not feeding your dog for several days, and see how lovable she is after that. (Given the strange literal mindedness of so many misogynists, I should add: don’t literally do that. Just imagine doing it, in your head.)
If I was ever to consider getting married again, the woman would have to (at the very least) rise to the level of the behavior of my beautiful little dog. Dogs and animals stay within the natural order in which God created; many people do not.
No, that’s ok. Stick to dogs for now.
EDITED TO ADD: As Molly Ren points out in the comments, it turns out that some dogs do pole dance. Heck, some even lick the stripper pole, like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. (Well, not exactly like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls.)
Yet another Reddit pedophilia explosion, this time centering around r/preteen_girls, a subreddit which is evidently filled with sexualized photos of preteen girls. (You thought the banning of Reddit’s Jailbait subreddit solved the problem? Nope; Reddit still hosts numerous subreddits catering to pedos.)
The subreddit came under some criticism elsewhere on Reddit a couple of days ago, and countless creeps leapt to its defense.
I don’t have the stomach to dig into this one, but ShitRedditSays is on the case.
Here’s an SRS thread discussing the screenshots and the controversy in general.
Many of the defenders of r/preteen_girls have responded to the criticism by angrily asserting that the pictures there aren’t nude or pornographic. Which is not, actually, true, as this SRS thread makes clear. Indeed, here is a screenshot of the incredibly creepy discussion that ensued in r/preteen_girls when one nude picture got posted. (Note: this screenshot shows a small censored thumbnail of the nude picture in question.)
Reddit used to be owned by Conde Nast. It is still owned by Conde Nast’s parent company Advance Publications. Why would this publishing giant, which owns dozens of media properties ranging from the New Yorker and Vanity Fair to the uber-wholesome Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, want to associate itself with a site that continue to host forums devoted to sexualized photos of underage girls?
NOTE: None of the links in this post go to r/preteengirls itself; they are all to discussions of it elsewhere. None of them link to any of the pictures in question, though one, as I noted, contains a censored thumbnail image of one picture posted there.
How seriously does Paul Elam, head cheese of A Voice for Men, take the issue of rape? So seriously that he has proudly declared that
Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.
It’s in bold in the original, too. Evidently, the best way to fight against false accusations is to let the guilty free.
Recently, Elam has started a whole campaign, complete with its own little acronym and everything, to encourage others to follow his lead. In one recent post, he even seems to be suggesting (in a wink-wink-nod-nod sort of way) that his followers should lie about their beliefs in order to get on juries, just so they can Fuck Their Shit Up and, as he put it in a one word comment advertising the post on Reddit, “nullify.”
Now, in his original post on rape, it seemed to be pretty clear that his ire was aroused specifically by the specter of evil women lying about being raped by men. As he put it, justifying his decision to acquit the guilty,
Women lie about being raped, judicial politicians make careers off of putting away sexual offenders, and a brainwashed public cheers it all on. That so many of the men caught up in this are innocent doesn’t stop the grinding wheels of all this injustice for even a moment.
But before we conclude that Elam’s stance on rape is simply misogynist, I point you to a new post that suggests that he takes the rape of men just as (not) seriously as he takes the rape of women – to the point that he thinks it’s hilarious to make jokes about raping men. Announcing a radio show devoted to further discussion of his surreal atheist post from earlier this week, he says this about one famously feminist atheist activist who is also a dude:
Hopefully, before we are done [with the radio show], MRA’s of differing views will find more common ground, and PZ Myers will be limping to the drug store for some KY Jelly.
I guess on AVfM, making a rape joke about about a man is just peachy, so long as the man in question is someone you don’t like.
Stay classy, Paul!
(Thanks to Xanthe for alerting me to Elam’s most recent post.)
Let’s celebrate this lovely February day with some random stupidity from Alcuin, a brave anti-misandrist intellectual titan who is single handedly bringing about what he calls “the Intellectual Renaissance of the Western Tradition.” Mostly by blathering on and on about how much ladies suck.
The history of achievement is, in fact, the history of male achievement to such an extent that, were women absent from human history, we might still be where we are today, but were men absent from history, da wimmin would be in the caves, screeching ‘n hollering at each other. …
Dante wrote the Divine Comedy. Feminists crafted VAWA, the beginning of the end of western freedom.
Shakespeare changed the English language. Sharon Osbourne laughs about the female mutilation of men.
Socrates established a way of thinking and reflection on the virtues that still inspires us. Women falsely accuse men of rape on a weekly or even daily basis.
Feminism is the KKK with tits. The only difference is that western women don’t have any shame, so don’t cover up with white bedsheets. They are openly supremacist. That is why their starting point parallels the KKK, but they tend towards Nazism as well. The Hitlerists were no more ashamed of their supremacism than western women are of theirs. Both bigoted groups, in fact, are quite proud of their prejudicial thinking.
Racial supremacists running around with bedsheets are cockroachy – they run to the darkness whenever light is shed on them. Feminists, like Nazis, prefer the limelight. Will we soon see Nazi-like rallies with tens of thousands of banshees and their manginic self-hating male bozos?
Men are made into buffoons by Hollywood because male buffoonery sells. Women eat it up as greedily as they inhale chocolate cake and buy useless luxury goods. “Everybody Loves Raymond” is Everyman. Why does your mother like that sitcom so much? Because she’s a female supremacist. Why does your girlfriend like that show? Because she’s a female supremacist.
Life is too easy. It’s too easy for a woman to become a tramp, and experiment sexually and socially, so she does. What are the consequences? Our society has so much surplus that we’ve eliminated the consequences of bad or irresponsible behavior, at least for women. We are wealthy enough to reject the concept of shame. Thus, we have shameless hussies.
Perhaps because men are still the most creative movers and shakers of our society, men as a whole class have been pushed into being the responsible ones, the moral adults. Women are let off the hook, able to remain perpetual moral children, responsible for none of their behavior, such as drunken sex. Non-issues such as faulty breast implants or police warnings about slutware enrage these people because they face no real injustices or hardships.
Slutware?
Also, here are The Undertones, with “Life’s Too Easy.”
At the risk of splitting the “misogynist dickbaggery in the atheist movement” discussion in two, I really need to mention the amazingly well-timed Reddit meltdown of TheAmazingAtheist. It’s already been covered pretty well by PZ Myers and by Jen McCreight of BlagHag but, what the heck, I’ll throw in my two cents as well.
TheAmazingAtheist, for those who don’t follow these things, is (or was?) a popular atheist podcaster well-known, and beloved by some, for being something of a misogynist dickbag. He’s been on a anti-feminist kick for the last couple of months, winning himself many plaudits on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, though even the MR regulars couldn’t help but notice that he’s a bit of an ass.
Well, now he’s pretty much revealed, with a series of horrendous comments on Reddit, what a complete and utter asshole he is. Let me put a second TRIGGER WARNING here (for violent talk about rape), on top of the default TRIGGER WARNING I put on all my blog posts.
The context : a discussion (which he started) about the propriety of one feminist Redditor calling themself ICumWhenIKillMen. I’m not going to defend that nickname, which obviously makes light of violence in an obnoxious way. But AmazingAthiest was apparently so troubled by this sort of language that he felt compelled to spew forth a succession of violent rape threats.
Let me draw your attention to some of the highlights. (Click here to see his whole comment history on Reddit, where he comments as terroja).
I’m tired of being treated like shit by you mean little cunts and then you using your rape as an excuse. Fuck you. I think we should give the guy who raped you a medal. I hope you fucking drown in rape semen, you ugly, mean-spirited cow. Actually, I don’t believe you were ever raped! What man would be tasteless enough to stick his dick into a human cesspool like you? Nice gif of a turd going into my mouth. Is that kind of like the way that rapists dick went in your pussy? Or did he use your asshole? Or was it both? Maybe you should think about it really hard for the next few hours. Relive it as much as possible. You know? Try to recall: was it my pussy or my ass?
He continued in this fashion for some time, mocking those who pointed out that rape threats can be triggering, and regularly referring to his opponents as “cunts.” (Each of the following paragraphs is from a separate comment of his; click the quotes to see the full comments in question in their original context.)
Yes, you read that right: he was saying this shit to a rape victim.
Eventually, theAmazingAtheist found himself stopped short by this scathing critique, from the Redditor called veerserif.
I now know that, apart from being misguided, intentionally ignorant, and quick to resort to pathetic excuses, you are also a purposefully hurtful person with no sense of empathy, and no sense of remorse. You’re not just unintentionally uninformed, you actively turn what you know against people who should be deserving of your sympathy.
I was mistaken before. I thought, maybe, just maybe, after the circlejerking and the giggling, I could try showing you the stuff you said I didn’t highlight. I could show you what feminism has done for men, or maybe tell you about the existence of sex-positive feminism.
But this… this is a whole new level.
Your reputation, in my eyes, has fallen so far that dragging it back up to “mild disgust” would require nothing short of a miracle. You pretend to care about other people, but you really don’t. You like to think that you’re a decent human being, but you fall so far short of that you’re practically on separate planes of existence.
Deliberately triggering a rape victim? Equating being called out on your bullshit to the trauma of rape?
You know what you deserve? You don’t deserve death. You don’t deserve rape. You don’t even deserve some cosmically mandated, hilarious schadenfreude which would not only be brilliant, but just.
What you deserve is for everyone to know this side of you. You deserve for anyone who thought you were a good person to know what you’ve just done. You deserve your fans’ adoration turning to hatred, you deserve the judging stares and looks that people will give you. You deserve to be reminded, every day, of what you do and what you’ve done. You deserve to remember every day that there are people who suffer more than you, that there are people who are stronger and smarter, braver, more principled and better than you, in every way, until the day you realise exactly how wrong your actions have been.
I don’t want to see bodily harm visited on you, because I don’t want to see bodily harm visited on anyone. What I do want is for you – and, for that matter, every shitposter I’ve ever seen – to learn that anonymity is not an excuse.
At this point, theAmazingAtheist backed off, offered a whiny, petulant non-apology apology for, as he put it, “SOME of the statements I made,” and wondered aloud why people were still so mad at him.
He went on to make, yep, a little video about his experience, and to offer a weird and unconvincing “rebuttal” to PZ Myers’ comments on his meltdown. See PZ Myers’ post for links to the video, as well as the rebuttal itself (which is effectively re-rebutted by Myers). See here and here for a transcript of the video.
One heartening sign in all this: the massive numbers of downvotes theAmazingAtheist got for his worst comments. I hope that a significant number of them were from actual Men’s Rights Redditors, and not only from people who came into the discussion from elsewhere on Reddit, but of course there is no way of knowing.
Will atheists and MRAs drop theAmazingAtheist like a hot rape-threatening potato? Or will they start rallying around him as some sort of heroic truth teller and rape threatener? Somehow I suspect there will be a bit of both.
Paul Elam has apparently become something of a comedian – though not on purpose. In his latest post on A Voice for Men, he takes on the atheist community for being too in thrall to (wait for it) feminism.
I’ll let him explain:
[T]hey are too religious. Yes, I mean that literally. For when you wipe away all the bombastic bellowing about empiricism and the strident mocking of those who choose a life of faith, what you are left with is a population of people that surrender their reason and cognition as though they were at gunpoint; that hit their knees as fast as any Catholic…to worship at the altar of feminism.
His proof? Several years ago someone at Atheist Nexus posted a link to a Men’s News Daily column of his, and – get this! – some feminists responded!
You can go here to see all the horrible things these evil cultish feminist atheists said. Like, for example:
I guess I’m a feminist, but I really like men and these are some of the things I love about them:
Protectiveness is a positive trait in men that women who want to have babies look for. We also like passion and some recklessness, but you won’t get me to admit that to my daredevil husband…..
Confidence; men usually have more of it and it is mostly a postive trait.
The ability to make decisions quickly.
Physical strength and endurance are helpful in many family situations. Ahem.
Penises. You have them, lots of us like them. I know it’s not technically a “trait”, but I had to put that in.
You can practically taste the man-hate there!
Elam, I should note, ignores that comment. No, what’s got his underpants in a wad is this comment:
The whole web site mensnewsdaily.com is a sad overreaction to the growing equality of women in society.
Evidently he’s been stewing about this remark for more than two years.
In fact, if you go and take a look at it, the discussion on Atheist Nexus wasn’t … really … all that feminist. Yes, several people criticized Elam and mensnewsdaily as “extreme,” but one of those people also criticized radical feminists as similarly “extreme.” Some of the commenters explicitly identified themselves as feminist; others explicitly criticized feminism. Nonetheless, the discussion somehow managed to be the politest conversation about gender I’ve run across online in a long, long time.
Seriously. Go take a look at it. Then consider how Elam sums it all up:
Apparently they can’t even handle 50 years of loud mouthed arts majors without drinking the Kool-aide and going brain dead. There was scarcely a voice among them that did not wallow in the ersatz enlightenment so common to feminist ideologues.
And then he moves on to whatever this is:
Feminism, as far as ideology goes, has been very effective at using human reproductive realities to co-opt other movements. In fact, from the American Civil Rights Movement to Occupy Wall Street, feminism has progressed without paying its own way, but rather by sending women in to other social arenas and wheedling men into supporting them. The Borg would be proud if they had emotions. Resistance is Futrelle.
Ho ho! Futrelle rhymes with futile! Sort of! Lest Elam and co. become too overwhelmed with pride for this clever wordplay, I should note that some junior high schoolers beat him to the punch back in the late 70s. Or maybe it was grade schoolers. I really don’t remember.
I’m less clear about the rest of his argument about “human reproductive realities.” Apparently it’s a fancy way of saying that dudes only support feminism so they can get laid. Another highly original notion.
Elam’s other piece of evidence that feminism has taken over the atheist community? PZ Myers.
He quotes this evil athio-feminazi ideologue arguing that if male atheists want to get more women involved in the atheist community, they should:
Learn to shut up and listen. Seriously. You want women to find your organization pleasant and interesting and worth contributing to? Then don’t form panels full of men trying to figure out what women want, talking over women who try to get a word in edgewise, belittling women’s suggestions with jokes, and trying to determine how We Well-Meaning Men can give Those Women what we think they want. You are assuming an authority and presuming that it is in your power to give it to the minority, when what you should be doing is deferring to that minority and giving them your attention, letting them speak and shape your organization.
God – or, if you prefer, Imaginary Entity – forbid that male atheists actually listen to women explain why they might feel unwelcome in the mostly male (and not particularly feminist friendly) atheist community.
You really think feminism has taken over the atheist community? Take a look at Reddit’s Atheism subreddit, where, recently, a woman who recently described how she had been raped was attacked as a liar and a slut in a thread filled with rape jokes. Or go back a little further to the Elevatorgate brouhaha, where an atheist blogger who politely mentioned in a podcast that she doesn’t really like being hit on by strange men in elevators at 4 AM drew the ire of countless angry atheist dudes, including Richard Fucking Dawkins himself? (In case you want to revisit that bit of nastiness, I wrote about “Elevatorgate” in several blog posts; here are some reactions from decidedly non-feminist atheists.)
This is a movement that “worship[s] at the altar of feminism[?]” Not really seeing it, dude.
But again, congrats on the whole Futrelle/futile thing. Genius!
