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.
@Kyrie:
The ‘:’ comes from trying to differentiate one’s “true” name from the name that the government uses. Get this. Because names on official stuff like birth certificates are usually in capital letters (like JOHN DOE), and a bunch of other stuff you just put normal notation (like John Doe), this proves that there are two entities with similar names, and some laws only apply to the former!
My guess is that the ‘:’ is part of the set of magic words (like Nolan describing himself as “Peter-Andrew of the Nolan family”) that is supposed to get you your secret monies.
As for the judge, he’s trying to get the judge to admit to some sort of Oath of Office. I think the idea is that the judge would only be able to say those words if he were acting under common law, which would compel him to recognize Nolan’s “inalienable rights,” which Nolan probably thinks would guarantee the court to rule in his favor. But, (again according to Nolan), the judge was actually part of a private corporation, and therefore without the oath, which is why the judge didn’t say there was one. This means that the judge isn’t compelled to accept Nolan’s rights, but also means that Nolan isn’t compelled to be ruled by any judgement… or something.
The judge ignored it, I think, because it was nonsense, and he probably either recognized this tactic (and therefore ignored it) or just didn’t want to play into what he perceived as a delusion. You don’t humor your defendant as a judge, you simply do your best to move the process along.
… which isn’t even true.
@AACC:
Dang… I can’t find where I read this, but here is the explanation by the sovereigners themselves. I thought I had read that having a fringe on flags was common in the navy, but the website appears to be talking more broadly about “military.” Hrm…
Perhaps I’m remembering wrong… but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that gold fringes were common in the navy, therefore they made the leap that anyone who flies that particular flag must also be part of the navy.
Also, html. y i fail u?
The flags at my kid’s elementary school have gold fringe. School yard law? And what law applies when I’m using my glitter pens? I’ma scared.
That’s what I seem to remember, as well. Not so much the bit about the court is a pirate ship! but the ah-ha! We caught you being an illegitimate jurisdiction! bit.
Probably you heard from the sovereigns that gold fringes were common in the navy. And the navy is more than just ships and boats; probably there’s a gold-fringed flag in a naval office in the Pentagon somewhere.
It’s all about grasping at straws to deny the government legitimacy.
@Sharculese — Yeah, I get that Australia and Ireland are both common-law countries, but they’re not the same common law country and I wouldn’t try to defend myself in one while only familiar with the other. Of course, I wouldn’t try to defend myself at all, but I have at least a lick of sense.
Judges actually do sign or give an oath to their office when sworn in. The oath is usually kept by some official clerk (in my county, the clerk of the board keeps the oaths of the various levels of judges.)
Also, fringe on the flag, per the 1925 US Attorney General opinion: “the fringe does not appear to be regarded as an integral part of the Flag, and its presence cannot be said to constitute an unauthorized addition to the design prescribed by statute. An external fringe is to be distinguished from letters, words, or emblematic designs printed or superimposed upon the body of the flag itself. Under law, such additions might be open to objection as unauthorized; but the same is not necessarily true of the fringe.” 34 Op. Atty. Gen 483
The US Army of Heraldry once said, and I am paraphrasing here because it is the Army and they never officially talk like this, “Cuz it looks pwetty.
@Argenti, I’ve read cases from the late 1700s and early 1800s where judges with the older view of the common law (that it is some sort of extrinsic thing, and certainly not judge created, please ignore all the judges) trying to reconcile that the French Common Laws and the British ones looked very, very different. It’s somewhat amusing to watch them try. Though they do accurately point out the flaws in some of the statutory supporters arguments in a way that did turn out to be correct. Supporters of total statutory law believed it would be an almost populist move, because anyone could find and read the laws (vs a complex system of obscure research around precedents that even a lot of lawyers and judges had trouble with at the time), and the Common Law judges pointed out that the rules would have to be vague and left for interpretation under the Common Law or by judges anyways, or so very specific it would be impossible to write a law for every conceivable set of facts.
Oh, I should add that while a lot of statutory supporters were reformists, it’s not the case that all Common Law supporters were conservatives or used the Common Law theories in ways that supported the privileged and wealthy over the poor. Some of the big early anti-corporate judges utilized the fact that corporations did not have common law rights, and some Common Law supporting judges at the time were also fond of attributing things like “justice” as being part of the common law and using it to try and rule in ways to support targeted minorities or others being discriminated against by written laws.
I reckon it’s about the ‘magic words’. A few of my friends, when they’re in a stressful situation and a bit crook, or smoking dope, start talking about taking people to court, and using legal-sounding words. The words feel important, for an important situation, and you need a way to MAKE the offending party stop hassling you. The flavour of it feels like when little kids go “this is the ULTIMATE weapon!”. I’ve never heard anyone talk about sovreign citizen stuff, though. I reckon because my friends don’t have internet. When you come across US sovreign citizen stuff, you use their words as well because they sound powerful and important.
Oh wow, P-A:N(C) at the disco.
I missed a Sovereign Citizen showing up? Boo-urns.
It’s cargo-cult legalism. They have no idea how the law works, but they know it involves fancy words…
Since they believe the government uses the money in your fictional straw-person-account to redeem foreign debt, there’s no reason they couldn’t keep doing that after the real you dies.
I grew up in New Mexico, and the oldest stratum of our legal system is Spanish.
DAMN the block quotes!
That first judge that Nolan was dealing with was remarkably patient, but not all of them will be. He’s pretty much guaranteed to get fined for contempt of court at some point if he keeps that nonsense up.
It really does read like an attempt at magical invocations. And I can see how a rational person might attempt that in a cynical attempt to manipulate the situation (in which case I imagine the judge would be a lot harsher), but with people like Nolan who’re not remotely rational it must be a real challenge to the court dealing with them. How do you communicate with someone in a court setting when they’re processing everything you’re saying through a miasma of magical thinking?
Patiently and make sure you know more about what they are spouting off about then they do.
Also, remember, gags are your friend.
@VoiP:
In that case, why doesn’t the government just print more money? They’re creating a fictional person and funding it with money (where that money comes from, they don’t explain…). Why not just skip the middle-man and make more meaningless money?
Even if the money comes from taxes or something… Why not just… tax? Why create a fictional person? And what does “using people as collateral” mean in the context of foreign debt? If the US defaults, are citizens suddenly shipped over to China as slaves? But the person is fictional… sooooo…
ow… *brain hurt*
Then there’s the whole “citizenship” issue. Under British (or, earlier, English) Common Law, you’re not a citizen at all; you’re a subject of the crown. There is such a thing as Australian Citizenship, but it only started in 1949 – and came into being as a result of statute law (specifically, the Australian Citizenship Act 1948).
Now, IANAL, but it does seem that he were somehow magically able to free himself from statute law and become subject to Common Law only, that would not make Mr. Copyright a Sovereign Citizen; it makes him a subject to a sovereign.
I seem to have missed a lot while asleep!
“How do you communicate with someone in a court setting when they’re processing everything you’re saying through a miasma of magical thinking?”
Exactly the way that judge did, you stick strictly to procedure and ignore the clown (or charge him with contempt if it’d help any, which it wouldn’t with sovereigns) — in a criminal case you’d need a competency hearing to determine if the delusions interfered with the ability to defend yourself and it gets messy, civilly though? You want to act a fool that’s your own damned problem.
“Since they believe the government uses the money in your fictional straw-person-account to redeem foreign debt, there’s no reason they couldn’t keep doing that after the real you dies.”
But…but…I thought the straw-person-account wasn’t money either? Just more numbers on paper using the real flesh-and-blood you as collateral? Thus my guess that loosing the collateral (death in this context) would cost the gov’n money…their “logic” escapes me though, so idfk.
“Judges actually do sign or give an oath to their office when sworn in. The oath is usually kept by some official clerk (in my county, the clerk of the board keeps the oaths of the various levels of judges.)”
Yeah but it looks like PA:N(C)’s issue was that the oath must be hung in the courtroom to be legal — he seems to think he “won” because the oath was in a book of records downstairs >.<
"I grew up in New Mexico, and the oldest stratum of our legal system is Spanish." — the more you know! So that means that even looking at just US sovereign citizens, they have 3 common law systems to contend with, and idk the Spanish one, but the English and French ones are sometimes impossible to mesh together.
I am really amused by the idea of admiralty law applying — finders keepers losers weepers? That's not just a schoolyard taunt, that's admiralty law in some cases. This is why treasure hunting is still a thing though, even if the owner is found you'll (probably) get a reward for the risk of salvage. This makes no sense on land of course, where picking up someone's lost keys or whatever is basically 0 risk XD
I don’t know if it’s supposed to be actual cash, but I do know that some of them believe you can either reclaim the money with that account or pay your bills with it. A lot of them get busted trying to pay the rent by attempting to draw on that account.
I for one have no idea what a sovereign citizen is. I’m trying so hard to follow all this. But reading his internalization of how he thought he was winning was hilarious. The title of that transcript should include the words, “descent into madness.”
Yeah, that was the bit where I almost felt sorry for him. It was all a bit Monty Python’s Black Knight. “Come back! I’ll bite your legs off!”
“Come back! I’ll bite your legs off!” *walks past ignoring the bleeding Black Knight*
Yeah, that seems about right XD
VoIP — I want to pay rent with imaginary money! Gods that’d be sweet. Of course, it’s so silly that they aren’t even wrong.
Jessay — start with wiki and then read the FBI bulletin. VoIP has more resources on them, but those two are a good overview (they make as much sense to me as Dadaism though, and the Dadaist where all about not making sense)