PROTIP: If you don’t want people to think you’re hateful, you probably shouldn’t talk about how the notion of making feminists afraid gives you a misogyny-boner. Or give dudes who say shit like this any upvotes:
Actually, here at Man Boobz we still chuckle about you guys. Pretty much all the time.
Also, Demonspawn? Complaining about women having the right to vote? Probably not a great PR move either.
Damn! You’re right. After all that time David spent making sure the blog’s banner clearly reads “Misogyny: I offer substance, point by point rebuttals, and attempts at substance and point by point rebuttals of it” too.
A fine piece of pixellated word-art, yet it is for naught! Foiled, I say, foiled! By our own blog banner! Zounds, but I do curse the stars which did attend my inauspicious birth! Is there no justice in this world, I ask thee? Is there no mercy!?!? *shakes fist* *clutches pearls* *wails*
@BoggiDWurms: Actually, as someone trained in sociolinguistics and stylistics, with a bit of interest in pragmatics, I can with some Academic Authority say that Manoobz is a discourse community–there’s nothing that says (in the academic literature) that “discourse” must be heavy-duty polysyllabic about what cis elite straight white men have deemed important! “Discourse” as an object of study is simply any written or spoken communication–without the value that people like Empthnologic like to assert (i.e. that some written/spoken communication is “better” in some objective way than other ditto–when there’s a centuries long pattern of asserting that only the discourse of the elites is worth studying, the outsiders tend to notice).
I’m actually thinking of doing some work down the line on discourses on feminist blogs vs. MRA blogs (right now my current work is on critical race discussions in fandom); while I’d never do Manboobz because I participate here, it would be perfectly possible to study the discourse here to see the pattern and tendencies!
@ithilania- That sounds fascinating. What I think is so interesting about sites like this is the interconnectedness of different “corners” of the internet that seem to be populated by the same crowd of regulars (I’ve found regular posters here on pandagon, captain awkward, tigerbeatdown, offbeatbride, the pervocracy, and noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz, and that’s just based on the corners of the internet that I frequent) and the way that these sites are used as points of connection for sharing of personal stories and building relationships, as well as political discourse. It strikes me that the internet seems to be replicating patterns of real-life interactions, with people using stable pseudonyms to establish presence and communication across multiple online communities and platforms.
tl;dr- I was an anthropology major in another life, and it produces serious navel gazing at the way that humans tend towards certain types of societies!
I’d love to hear ithaliana’s theories about not so much the regulars, as the tendency of outsiders to try to force their way into groups and force the people in them to interact with them (ie trolling) and how that relates to offline behavior. Drive by trolling is a different issue, but when people are plainly told that they’re not welcome in an internet community and they just won’t leave I find myself making all sorts of assumptions about what that person is like offline.
The pattern of circles that intersect that M Dubz is talking about is interesting too. What’s really weird and cool is when you run into someone who you know from one type of environment (say, a fandom of some sort) in another environment (say a political blog). It’s interesting to see how people’s interests do and don’t intersect.
Men posting here, guess what….that trick that, in high school when youd tell the girl with utmost sincerity, “Im not like other guys, they just want one thing”….and that would get you the one thing…
You’re not the first, nor will you be the last to try the “Feminist men are just after pussy/female approval.” ploy in here. Better trolls than you have tried this and failed.
@M Dubz: Seriously, yes (and I recognize your icon too! So, shared knowledge/allusions).
It strikes me that the internet seems to be replicating patterns of real-life interactions, with people using stable pseudonyms to establish presence and communication across multiple online communities and platforms.
I spent years during the 1990s trying to get my student to realize that their insistence on making a distinction between “real” communication (face/face) and “fake” communication (online) was (academic speak warning) problematic! (The best parts were when asked them to define ‘real.’)
I’d go further: as an animistic pagan queer woman who never married (and wouldn’t marry my partner even if we could) and who never wanted children and is a major sf fan, I can have very few offline interactions with anybody ‘like me’ to any great extent–I find those communities on the internet. People do use stable pseuds to establish identities that allow them to connect with others over time. I could never get that involved in the feminist communities (some of which you name above) on blogs–I am still not sure what drew me so strongly to Manboobz (but the mocking and snark is definitely a part of it).
People have been forming ‘interest and hobby’ groups in formal ways since the 19th century; earlier, it was done mostly in urban areas (needed that ‘oomph’ of larger population). Now there are people doing it on the internet — and it’s just as real as the earlier historical versions of it (and in some ways very similar–I was a member of an APA–amateur press association–in the 79s-80s, and when I joined LiveJournal in 2003 was fascinated the the similarities and differences in how online fandom worked compared to apa fandom).
@Cassandrasays: I’d love to hear ithaliana’s theories about not so much the regulars, as the tendency of outsiders to try to force their way into groups and force the people in them to interact with them (ie trolling) and how that relates to offline behavior.
That would be fascinating–but way beyond the score of ‘internet research’ (I did find a great article that a British researcher did on trolling, based on her dissertation, but it was a linguistic approach–just the text). That is, internet research does not try to compare online/offlne in any way (I’m not sure that anybody is doing that, now that I think about it–i.e. a lot of social science still works with traditional subject pools–in the U.S. that means college students in psychology classes–and some people work with internet communities, but both? Would be hard).
Sorry, I can babble on forever about this. What my current project involves (it’s a collaboration with psychologist and linguists) is the development of a more complex spider bot that can crawl and collect and annotate (tag, identify) data from specific communities and save it all to a searchable database that can then be analyzed, searched, etc.
This method tries to work from the patterns in natural language to some observations (might be called theories–I’m in humanities and “theory” means something a bit different in our discourse community, ahahahaha, than in the sciences).
Could you go visit MarkyMark again, next time you need lighter fare? He claims to have gotten a shoutout from the SPLC and his post on Empirical and Prima Facie Evidence That Women Should Not Vote is adorable Also we can thank the SPLC for his decision to not take his blog and go home.
Rutee: Yep. I thought the comparison apt.
Semi-OT, but I love spiders (the net kind, not the kind with 8 hairy legs). The whole tech aspect of how they’re designed and used is just really cool.
I guess my interest in this is, to what extent is disturbing behavior online predictive of similar behavior offline? Not sure that anyone has even tried to look into that, or how it would even be possible to look into it, but it would be useful information to have.
Here’s the newspaper article about the linguist’s work on trolling: I have a pdf of an academic essay she published on it, and if anybody wants me to send them a copy via email I’ll be glad to do so.
ithiliana AT hotmail.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/13/internet-trolls-improbable-research
Kyso, your wish is my commend!
@Empath:
Futrelle has tried just that, even holding a debate with Paul Elam in which Futrelle cited numerous studies to argue his case that Elam’s interpretations of those same studies were way off base. How did it go? Judge for yourself.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/activism/a-debate-on-domestic-violence/
There’s no point making ‘rebuttals’ against MRAs because most of what they say can only be answered with “No, you’re an idiot”. Go read some of Paul Elam’s nuttier statements, which Futrelle has catalogued. What can you possibly say in response to a comment that women who are raped are “damn near demanding it”? Nothing.
@Cassandra- Yeah, I’ve often wondered if the “meatspace” trolls that I’ve encountered are also pulling this shit online, and vice versa. I know that for myself, my online and offline personality are pretty darn consistent, but that on the internet I tend to speak much more freely and bluntly about things that I think but do not say in fact to face interactions, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true for much of the population.
Aw, damn. I took a nap and missed NWO.
Why do our new trolls all sound like pretentious goobers?
@CassandraSays: I guess my interest in this is, to what extent is disturbing behavior online predictive of similar behavior offline?
Total humanities person here, but as I understand it, the best psychologists/etc. are very reluctant to claim any predictive value in their work–although there seems to be some out there who feed into a general desire to be able to have things that neat and tidy. I don’t know enough to be sure though.
@ M Dubz
Yeah, part of the reason I’m inclined to think that many people’s behavior is similar online and offline is that mine is, too. I think that for some people the Internet exaggerates some of their personality traits, but other than the old school ED-style trolls I don’t think many people come across as completely different to how they do in meatspace. But again, that’s just a personal impression, doesn’t mean much without some research to back it up.
Re: rebuttal and MRAs
The problem with trying to argue with the MRA’s who believe that feminists are running everything and oppressing them (i.e. they talk about men, but they clearly don’t care about the male demographics who are seriously impacted by racism, homophobia, class standng, etc.) is that they don’t accept any evidence generated by anybody outside their very small circle because clearly everybody who disagrees with them is part of the conspiracy!
That, and as Crumbelievable says, they come out with absolute and complete bullshit generalizations that cannot be rebutted since they start from absolutely unrealistic and irrational premises.
Also, how do you rebutt something like this?
“And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.”
Or Elam’s statement about fucking feminists’ shit up giving him an erection? There’s nothing there to rebutt, it’s just a combination of prejudice and implied threats.
@MDubz and CassandraSays: I’ve been told by people I know first online and then meet offline (often at academic conferences, snicker) that there is a pretty high correlation between my ‘voice’ online and offline, so I think it’s likely true for many.
OTOH, it’s also true that people behave differently offline depending on the context I and power differentials: in 20 years of teaching first year comp, I’ve only had one student claim that he would talk the same way to his friends, his grandmother, and his minister, and he was hooted down in class by his peers. And people do learn different registers of speaking and writing — but’s that not the same as completely different personas.
It is fascinating to watch what happens when some of the trolls learn that the person they’re dissing is a man, not a woman!
Yeah, I’ve had people who know me offline recognize my “voice” online, and people I first met online say I’m exactly as they expected when we finally met in meatspace. But it’s possible that trolling by its very nature leads to people behaving in atypical ways.
Trolling seems like too much heavy lifting for some of these guys, so I’m thinking that a guy like NWO or DKM is every bit as unpleasant in meatspace.
It would be hilarious to interact with someone who talks like DKM in meatspace. He really needs to wear a cravat and suspenders if he’s going to speak that way.
shorter empathologicalism:
(not an exact quote)
To which I say:
1. lol
2. The thing about jellied eels.
3. That could have gotten me laid? Maybe I should have tried it.
4. The only time I’ve ever acknowledged not being like “other guys” is when someone tells me I’m not first. And that was only because I did not try to get into that person’s pants. And it was once.
5. Since when do we “slam men” here? If you’re someone who likes substantive point-by-point discussion, maybe you should check point number one of this site, which is mockery of misogyny.
6. Yeah, I’m pretty glad I’m not like other men insofar as “other men” are defined as a group of men who are misogynistic, racist, etcetera, just like I’m glad I’m not like women who are misogynistic, racist, etcetera.
@Cassandra- I think there’s an important distinction between people who troll just to get a reaction and people who are sincerely arguing heinous views (I would probably put mags in the former category and DKM and NWO in the latter). None of them are exactly wonderful people, but I think there’s a substantial difference in the way that they are awful.