Here’s JohnTheOther on A Voice for Men, complaining that Australian journalist Tory Shepard has unfairly accused “men’s rights extremists” associated with AVFM of using the term “lying bitches.”
“[L]ying bitches” might have [been] pulled from from a reader’s comment on one of more than 1200 articles on AVfM. But that phrase forms no part of this human rights movement’s standard rhetoric, which if Shepherd were a journalist, she would know.
Huh. Yeah, it’s probably just some sort of incredible fluke. Just one reader’s comment on one of more than 1200 articles!
Oops, I guess it was used more than once.
But it’s not like this sort of language is encouraged by JtO or his boss Paul Elam.
To be fair, they don’t always refer to women as bitches. Sometimes they refer to women by the much more genteel “cunt.”
Like the time Elam described the CEO of the Good Men Project as “a disingenuous cunt that makes her living off trying to turn men into lap dogs.” And the time he referred to comedic actress Katherine Heigl as a “misandric cunt.” Oh, and that time he referred to a commenter on his site as “Ms. Cuntforbrains, or if you are male, Mr. Cuntforbrains.” And the time he referred to the feminist blogosphere as the “cunt-o-sphere.” Very witty!
I know, it’s unfair to cherry-pick comments from the guy who actually started and runs A Voice for Men. Clearly he isn’t representative of the site at all.
(Note: Yes, I did say yesterday that I wasn’t going to read that JtO post on general principle. And yes, I did read a little bit more of it. But I have not read the whole thing, and I never will!)
But they didn’t say bitch bitch.
They don’t seem to realize that denial doesn’t work when there is a perfect record of what was actually said. I try hard to refrain from labeling people stupid, but jeez, what other explanation is there for that?
If the Manboobz regular trolls are anything to go off of, MRAs in general seem to have this problem.
This isn’t a conversation where you can just gaslight us with “I never said that!”, you guys. We have Google now.
I always wonder about movements where the followers have to constantly lie about their doctrine, history, rhetoric and associations.
Like, do any of these people ever stop and think that maybe the reason that they’re lying all the time is because their ideology isn’t valid to begin with?
Ugh – I think there’s a huge cognitive dissonance over the fact that they know “misogynist” is a bad thing to be called and they should defend against that, but they don’t quite get why it’s a bad thing.
I find it ironic that in a post where JtO is saying that AVfM does not call women lying bitches, the title of that same post implies that Shepard supports mass murder. His long winded post then tries to portray her as lying bitch. It’s like “How dare she say we call women lying bitches! She’s just a lying bitch!”.
99 problems? What does their 100th follower get?
Women are lamps. Lying lamps are out to steal my money and sperm. Lamps should get jobs. Lamps should stop stealing my job. Lamps told me not to write. Lamps ate my baby. Lamps are boars, even when they’re ten, and the lying lamps know they’re boars because MISANDRY. Lamps are attacking men by throwing their light bulbs at us. FALSE RAPE ACCUSING LAMP! MISANDRIST LAMP! SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES LAMP!
HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF USING THE WORD LAMP, YOU LAMP!
@Cliff
Yeah, I think you nailed it. Probably the same goes for poeple who are like, “It’s so mean of you to call me racist, I just think non-white people are the cause of every problem in society.”
but….but….RADFEMHUB!!!!1 they said some bad things too therefore that excuses us saying bad things. LOGIC!!!
“But that phrase forms no part of this human rights movement’s standard rhetoric, which if Shepherd were a journalist, she would know.”
People who don’t buy his version of reality aren’t journalists? He actually thinks that people are going to accept this argument? Because it took me about 30 seconds on Google to confirm that Shepherd is indeed a journalist. Check it out!
http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/tory-shepherd/
Calling women names just makes them look even more ridiculous.
Just like laughing at prison rape makes a person look ridiculous.
@Ugh
The more self-aware ones may occasionally rise to the level of “But it’s not bigotry if it’s TRUE!”
also don’t forget you guys…they’re not insulting women, just feminists. That’s why so many of the photos that head their articles are of beautiful, stuck-up looking women. Usually followed by text ranting about said women. I still remember that one about women talking to much space on the sidewalk. Women…walking and existing…that’s misandry!
1. Ha ha, they think saying “killer” instead of “murderer” covers their asses. This is why real news sources use the word “alleged.”
2. They can’t even refrain from implying people are “lying bitches” in the post where they deny doing so. It goes straight from “how dare you, we would never use that word” to “okay, yeah, that word fits a lot of lying bitches but it isn’t specifically a category on register-her.”
And in the comments, predictably:
5 upvotes, no downvotes, no replies. And excellent “no, no, slurs are okay so long as you only use them for the bad ones” justification, we’ve never heard that one before.
I think the logic here is that if you impose any conditions whatsoever on your hatred of women, it’s not misogynist. So if you say “I hate women,” yeah, that’s misogyny, but if you say “I hate women who wear shoes,” that’s totally in the clear!
So hating women who walk on the sidewalk is totally reasonable, because gosh, it’s not like he hates them just for being women or something! It’s an innocent sidewalk-based preference!
Next on AVfM: David Futrelle Has No Principles
I’m kidding! They wouldn’t say that. They’d make a ‘witty’ misspelling of David’s name.
@Cliff, rper1959 is Greg Canning, the subject of Shepherd’s article. So I guess that’s his official reaction to the article. The site he chose for his reaction, his use of a pseudonym, and the response itself, which is that Shepherd is a lying bitch, ends up looking like a guy lurking around the corner and taking a swift swipe, then running.
@Cliff
yep that’s pretty much is. Nevermind that the whole post was about only women and how they take up so much space with their giggly friends. That’s totally not misogyny, just like ranting about how black people take up so much space in public isn’t racism….OH WAIT.
*pretty much it
Quackers – I think the question with anything like that is why they didn’t just say “I hate people who block the sidewalk.” (And why they put this on a “men’s rights” website in the first place.)
Backpedaling to “no really this is all about sidewalks that’s all” doesn’t explain why they said specifically women.
Just slapping the word “alleged” onto something doesn’t really help legally with libel, something most tort and first amendment lawyers will tell you. Federal courts (and most state jurisdictions) have rather complex tests to determine whether a statement is in the form of/would be taken as/is intended as a “statement of fact”. I think the “alleged” thing is more of a journalism based notion about what is and is not acceptable than it is an actual reflection of legality.
@Cliff
Exactly. He made it sound like this was a specific thing only women do, and that his opinion (which is heavily biased anyway) was fact. I’ve been blocked by men and women alike, mostly people who walk to slow or just stop and stand in the middle of a busy walking space. Even then I don’t think they’re doing it on purpose just to spite me, they’re just being inconsiderate or not realizing they’re doing it. Whereas practically everything women do or don’t do is just to spite men.
How dumb do they think that not only us, but anyone who wanders on to their site and reads stuff like that, are not going to see how blatantly “women suck argle bargle” it is?
“Whereas practically everything women do or don’t do is just to spite men according to MRAs” I should say
ugh…can’t type right now, need coffee 😛