Men’s Rights Activists and manosphere misogynists love to complain that I “cherry pick” quotes in an attempt to make them look bad. Which makes it especially ironic that all too often when I call them out on some particular bit of bullshit, they more or less double down on that bullshit, reiterating and in many cases amplifying the terrible things they originally said.
Several days ago, I wrote about a Spearhead post from W.F. Price with the priceless title “After 25, Women Are Just Wasting Time.” It was appalling even by Spearhead standards. Price used the untimely death of a talented young writer named Marina Keegan as an opportunity to rehash the belief, widely held in the manosphere, that women over the age of 25 who haven’t managed to snag themselves a “good husband” are “just wasting time,” growing older and uglier and less appealing to men. (Evidently, women’s appeal to men is the only thing that really matters about them.)
Price’s article inspired numerous comments from Spearheaders that were even more grotesquely misogynistic and cruel than his own post; Price at least pretended to care about the dead girl, even though his post was a crass and opportunistic insult to her memory.
And it inspired one regular Man Boobz commenter, a 26-year-old woman, to wade into the muck that is the Spearhead’s comments section to point out that Price’s grand narrative of female decline after age 25 has no relation whatsoever to her own life story:
I’m 26 years old. 27 terrifyingly soon. I am nothing like the person I was when I graduated college.
After originally getting a film degree, I’ve just started nursing school.
I’m living on the other side of the country and loving the different culture here.
I’m dating a wonderful guy who mysteriously didn’t dump me on my 25th birthday.
I’m doing difficult, not always fun, but ultimately socially useful work, work I couldn’t imagine myself doing when I graduated college.Since I graduated college, I’ve read more books, worked on more movies, learned more skills, lifted more weight, traveled more places, marched in more protests, gotten published more times, saved more lives than I thought I ever would.
And I’m still only 26.
You think I’m going to stop protesting and writing and working the wild Saturday midnight shift in the ER before I’m 30? Before I’m 60?
Or do you think it doesn’t matter because I might not be as fuckable then?
Well then fuck you. I’m 26 and I got miles to go.
–
(Oh, and I’m way better at sex now. Guys who thought I hit my “expiration date” just around the time I was first learning what a Kegel was, you are missing out.)
The Spearheaders responded, predictably enough, with downvotes and insults and a lot of mainsplainy comments suggesting that she’s regret it forever if she doesn’t get married ASAP and start popping out children.
The strangest comment of the bunch came from a Spearhead “Shieldmaiden” (that’s what they call female commenters on The Spearhead, for reals) by the name of Andie, who launched into a barely coherent tirade that somehow revolved around, er, SCENTED CANDLES!
Price, after seeing Andie’s rant mocked by the commenters here, decided to feature it today as the Spearhead “Comment of the Week.” So without further ado, here is what Price considers to be the Spearhead community at its best:
@26 year old woman
Let’s see how you feel when you’re 29 and the end of everything possible is right at your doorstep. Hell, lots of women are infertile at 26. Done. You won’t do everything. You won’t be a mother.
And if that doesn’t bother you, darlin’, you ain’t a woman.
And if your plans are to actually BE a mother (as in do the damn work), you are already in very deep water.
Your resume will never put his chubby little arms around you and tell you he loves you, like a child will. Your resume will never give you grandchildren, like your children might. Your resume will never share in all your joys, all your sorrows, all your triumphs, all your tragedies, like your husband will.
But you WILL be able to rape that resume of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS over your lifetime. Yay!
The fastest growing consumer product category: scented candles. SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES.
Yes, 26 year old woman, all your education and opportunity and rights have resulted in millions of children raised without fathers, the total destruction of the family, the rise of GIANT ASS government to give all those wymyns a place to work (doing utterly useless shit) and what was it for? What did we gain?
SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES!!
Nicely done, ladies. Really good job.
Fuck you, bitch. My daughters are coming for you. And millions of daughters just like mine. We see you, you superficial piece of trash. You have cost us our lives. For patchouli candles.
You will pay.
Go back and read @26 year old woman’s comment, then read Andie’s again. Quite a contrast, wouldn’t you say?
I should note that when Price first posted the quote, he evidently left out the last few paragraphs; perhaps even he realized they were a tad over the line as a response to a woman whose only real “crime” was telling the Spearheaders that her life was interesting and fulfilling to her, and that she wasn’t planning on having any babies in the foreseeable future. (And if they didn’t approve of her life, too fucking bad for them.)
In the comments to Price’s “Comment of the Week” post, HL offers this thought:
Every time something like this comes up, it becomes ever more apparent that the ignorance, hate mongering, bigotry and fallacies rests so much more heavily on the side of the feminists.
To paraphrase Rick James, lack of self-awareness is a hell of a drug.
That would really be poignant and compelling if anyone were arguing the opposite. But no one is.
It’s pretty difficult to muster any sympathy for a guy who goes around publicly declaiming his view of Anders Breivik as a hero and endorsing the idea of men keeping women as chattel. This all sounds like the impotent rage of a frustrated abuser, not an unfairly deprived, loving father.
The mockery is, in any case, not about him, but his ideas. Plenty of men have gone through pain without becoming slavery- and murder- endorsing assholes. Fair fucking game for mockery, as far as I’m concerned. He wants sympathy, he should go to friends and get therapy and not talk about how he’d like to see women become the property of men.
he didnt. peter-andrew: nolan(c) is a sovereign citizen- a dude who believe that because he spells his name a stupid way, he is literally about the law. at his last family court hearing, his wife had compelling evidence that he was hiding assets from the court in order to screw him over, that he was violating a court order by sending her nasty, threatening e-mails, and that he was harassing her parents with demands to convince her to not proceed with the divorce because he was under the assumption it was her father’s job to tell her what to do.
he refused to present evidence in his own defense; actually, he spent the whole proceeding in the back of the room haranguing the judge and trying to trick him into admitting the whole proceed was illegal. we know this because he recorded the proceeding and also posted the transcript, complete with is own completely insane notations.
he also famously wrote a post on the spearhead in which he gave multiple examples of how to commit anti-feminist terrorist attacks, including poisoning the water in all girl’s schools and setting off gas bombs in shopping malls. mind you, he made sure to point out he wasn’t advocating these things, just showing how easy it would be to do them.
the idea that family courts are biased against fathers is a myth, but it’s especially not true in peter-andrew: nolan(c)’s case, because he’s a violent, spiteful fuckhead who’s contempt for women is infinite and unknowable.
*above the law
*screw her over
fuck proofreading
Charlotte, there is no such thing as reverse sexism, and these men are not poor, put-upon misunderstood dears whose pain we just can’t imagine.
Why don’t you try dispensing your sympathy over on the Spearhead?
@bostonian
er, this both understates the problem and ignores that men can be the victims of abuse
far too often, abusers get FULL custody, because if you have one parent who has been driven nearly insane by years of abuse and one parent who is good at presenting xirself as an upstanding member of the community (as many abusers are) guess who the court will side with
OMG. OMG. OMG U GUISE. OMG.
I’m totally meeting peter-andrew: nolan(c) for the first time here. But my urge to “review” this “book” is OVERWHELMING. And, as a feminist with a law degree who’s also a professional book critic, I’m probably in the world’s most super-hilariously well-situated place to do so.
Oh peter-andrew: nolan(c), WHY MUST YOU TEMPT ME? Into the use of ALL CAPS, no less, which probably now means I’m “legally” “obligated” to review your “book”?
@ Sharculese – yep, I’ve seen that happen. And when the abuser did show their nasty side, it still took a while for the courts to fix it, because every hearing was with a different judge, and different solicitor.
can we stop responding to people with ‘hie thee to the spearhead’? even compared to the mrm at large, the spearhead is a cesspool, and when we respond to people who are well-meaning but clueless, or even genuinely awful but haven’t reached price’s ‘women and minorities are basically animals’ level of awful, it’s not fair and it doesn’t help the argument that we’re responding to what mras say, not to the fact that they’re mras.
@dani
be careful, you can get sucked in picking apart nolan’s mistakes of law. did you know that the governing document of australian law is the uniform commercial code? and that the ucc addresses corporate law? or that copyright is a common law doctrine?
also, if you’re just learning about p-a:n(c), super lawyer, i recommend you with the annotated version of his family court hearing, available here:
http://www.crimesagainstfathers.com/australia/Forums2/tabid/369/forumid/200/threadid/1108/scope/posts/Default.aspx
Ohmygod. CharlotteCollins is kinda hilarious too. CC: No one’s saying that men aren’t capable of loving their children. We’re just saying that there’s something deeply fucking wrong with Peter-Andrew: Nolan(c) and he’s a ridiculous person who has chosen to focus his entire life on misunderstanding the legal system and government, loudly complaining about women, talking endlessly about how much he understands the legal system and government, and harassing his ex-wife. So, like, WOW you’re kindhearted and stuff, but uh yeah. Nice shieldmaidening. Maybe Emma’ll drop by and you can form a supersekrit anti-mockery club to protect violent MRA’s feefees.
I’m only a couple pages into the transcript and already the contrast between P___don(c) and the other people is stunning—it’s like he’s Roger Rabbit in Hollywood.
@ charlottecollins – “Seriously, though. I know this website loves to mock the things men say in anger, but sometimes that anger comes from a place of deep and abiding despair.”
And this is a key problem with the MRM. There are plenty – plenty – of organizations that could and gladly would help men with that despair. But the MRM seems to actively discourage men from ever dealing with their problems. On an emotional level, it tells them to hold on to their despair rather deal with it sensibly. On a practical level it tells them that they can’t improve their lot. They can’t reach a reasonable compromise in a divorce because of a nebulous feminist conspiracy; they can never find love because they’re Betas, and so on.
So what do they offer “despairing” men? Since they can’t – or more realistically, won’t – offer a hand pulling them out of this hole of despair, it suggests the best move is to pull the entire female gender in with them! And this is the point where I stop feeling sorry for them.
An annotation from the transcript:
Good lord. He must have been a joy at home.
I dunno, shaculese, I think that level of defending the indefensible kind of belongs over there with Price and his morons.
It’s not different for men. They love the same.
I’m not a robot without emotions, I’m not what you see,
I’ve come to help you with your problems so we can be free,
I’m not a hero, I’m not a savior, forget what you know,
I’m just a man who’s circumstances went beyond his control…
P-A:N(C) is Mr. Roboto!
Honestly, I would happily reply to everything by linking to Mr. Roboto.
A satanic pirate priest? That sounds kinda awesome, actually.
“Honestly, I would happily reply to everything by linking to Mr. Roboto.”
The Brain approves.
(a brain who happens to be named red_locker at that, but hey)
i’m rereading that transcript now and i had forgotten that part of the evidence that p-a:n(c) was hiding assets was that he admitted it in his nasty e-mails. yeah, dude basically hung himself.
Oh, I get it. He saw that Futurama episode with the space brains, and decided to try the same thing on the judge: “Now, he’s trapped in my world! A crappy world of plot holes and spelling errors!”
If it weren’t so sad that he’s such a delusional ass, his final annotation on the transcript would be hilarity for the ages.
Also, I note that he apparently referred to “his” children—that is, the children of his ex-wife’s former marriage—as his former children and as “leeches.” You know, the ones he’s so concerned about having been “kidnapped”?
Also also, the note about copyright on the bottom of the first page is so deliciously ironic it gives me an icecream headache.
Charlotte, glad to see that you have a kind heart. Nowe go read some history about what happened to unwed mothers up until very recently. It goes something like this: they’d be sent to special homes far from family. When the time came to give birth they were drugged partially insensible. Their children were given birth to and the mothers never got to hold their new babies. Then they were sent back home and forced to pretend that nothing had happened other than a lovely vacation with family.
Today we can’t force women to give up their children in such ways. But larger issues can conspire to convince mothers to give up their children at birth. I know, because I had a son I gave up for adoption. I know what it is to lose a child. And despite all that, I have never once thought ill of the entire male gender (or anyone really) nor wished them any harm. I nearly lost my sanity in the year or so after that and I was deeply bitter about the circumstances that made adoption necessary. But wallowing in hatred is not the answer. Reminding oneself day after day of all that wrong without changing your own life and outlook is not the answer.
Tthe loss of my son is a bitter sorrow. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And rather than drag people down with me, I work to help those who need it.
What is this madness? Mr. Nolan that is, and this transcript!
“By standing in the public gallery area and NOT entering between the rails (signifying stepping onto davids ‘ship’) I retained all my inalienable rights.” — no, you made yourself look unstable and thus less suitable than your ex, and made it impossible to hear you without yelling. That’s the point of the little front section in courts, so the judge can see and hear the relevant parties and not just people in the gallery >.<
Regarding leeches —
“If leeches ate peaches instead of my blood, then I would be free to drink tea in the mud!” — Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls (yes I really love that book)
@pillowinhell
I’m so sorry. My heart goes out to you.