Over on AskReddit, someone called 478nist has asked a question that has been puzzling a lot of us for some time: “Why is Reddit so anti-women? (outside of r/gonewild anyway).”
I used to think it was just because the large majority of users are men, but it’s not pro-men it’s becoming more and more anti-women.
Outside of the friendzoned crap, any comment that leans towards any kind of talk of womens issues, equal rights etc gets downvoted to hell so it’s not even capable of being discussed. It seems like it’s an US vs THEM mentality more and more. Was it always like this?
The thread that followed is nearly 2000 comments long, so far, and has gotten written up on TheAtlanticWire. The discussion is surprisingly … good? Not perfect — after all, this is Reddit we’re talking about here — but not terrible.
So naturally our friends in the Men’s Rights subreddit are complaining about it.
The legendary AnthonyZarat offers this thought:
MauraLoona, meanwhile, challenges the premise of 478nist’s question, and thereby challenges reality itself:
Legitimateusername also has a problem with Reddit’s alleged surplus of manginas.
Fuckrpolitics_again just goes with some plain old-fashioned misogyny:
The Men’s Rights subreddit, such a reliable generator of self-righteous poop.
Reddit doesn’t exclude women, and Reddit is a male-only space. Redditors are not sexist, and Redditors are sexist for a good reason.
It’s all perfectly clear.
holy fuck this is a new level of stupid
does anyone?
“does anyone?”
Nope. Not even other MRAs.
@jumbofish
The analogy is more apt than you care to admit, vile m-feminist!! After all, we live in a tomatoist society.
One of those tomatoes, a very sensitive and special one, could have grown up to be a potato if not for a vile misandrist teacher.
I don’t think Steeledude is Mr. Al, unless our old friend has seriously upped his troll game by now. Otherwise he would have given himself away ages ago.
Shouldn’t we be careful about criticizing Steele’s choice of analogies? After all, the only reason that Steele isn’t the world’s greatest writer is because of MISANDRY!!!11!
Ooh, are we talking about men and writing? I want Slavey to try to convince us that Steven King is totally on his side again.
@sharculese
NWO kinda does, huuck if he even exists, and his girlfriend. So one jewish conspiracy theorist, a person who is most likely a sockpuppet, and another who probably doesn’t exist……
Hey stealbutt did paul and those other people ever respond to that email about their support of tom martin???
…who’s the farmer in this analogy? I mean, potatoes and tomatoes could probably grow in the same field, if they weren’t planted separately, so in this analogy, who’s doing the planting?
And why am I trying to make an extended metaphor out of women = tomatoes?
I was mostly joking about Steele sounding like Mr. Al, just annoyed at that claim about reddit, but they do share various annoying qualities don’t they?
http://organicgardening.about.com/od/vegetablesherbs/p/tomatocompanion.htm
Mispotatory!
Aye, that they do.
jumbofish — Steele is Varpole, he’s seriously calling into question wtf makes a sock a sock considering he’s still using Steele, long after revealing himself to be Varpole.
Re: Mr. Al — I don’t think Varpole’s Mr. Al, just that they’re similarly annoying.
Cliff — well then, that’s a good reason for farmers to separate them. Now if only Steele could provide a reason to apply that principle to the internet (bonus points if he can work in potato blight)
I know, I was just saying they are eerily similar but I don’t think mr.al would go through all that effort. XD
Not to mention all the rape apologia they spew on a daily basis.
Damn white knight farmers. They grow potatoes underground, where they’re all safe and warm. But they grow tomatoes in cages!
@Rubyhypatia – you are indulging in apex fallacy.
That the majority of the powerful happen to be men, does not advantage the other 99.9% of men. You think it does, because you only really “see” powerful men, in contrast weak, poor, young, old, ill, homeless men are virtually invisible to you as “men”. To you they are just background noise.
See also: Powerful men sending millions of other, poorer less powerful men off to die in e.g. WWI (during which the majority of British men who died didn’t even have the vote) WWII…. hell just about any war, and there’s always a fucking war or three or five happening somewhere.
See also: every Dirty Difficult Dangerous job done almost exclusively by men (in the West) often for shitty or sometimes no pay, in particular trafficked labourors held under slave conditions (far more numerous than trafficked sex workers, by the way)
Recent cases: ?Indonesian? fishermen effectively pressganged, forced to work at sea for months & not paid – situation exposed in Australia. Also, recent convictions of a gang of so-called “Travellers” enslaving & trafficking homeless men in workgangs – in the UK and Europe)
Silly Cliff: mispotatory don’t real! Everyone knows that when potatoes are harmed, it’s because of their choices, but when tomatoes are it’s because of those mantato farmers.
cloudiah – Worse than that, sometimes they string them up by their feet!
http://www.amazon.com/Ventures-82506-Topsy-Turvy-Upside-Down/dp/B0001WYNP0
Yeah, but 99.9% of women aren’t any better off. If you say “don’t just look at the rich ones,” remember that most women aren’t rich either.
Compare apples to apples–when you’re looking at the plight of weak, poor, young, old, ill, or homeless men, don’t compare them to suburban housewives, compare them to weak, poor, young, old, ill, or homeless women.
But he can’t compare poor men to poor women, because then he wouldn’t be able to pretend that those men’s exploitation is about gender. And that just won’t do.
Ruby Hypatia has made a number of factually wrong and morally despicable claims.
But this isn’t one of them. Men really do “have just as many rights, if not more, than women.” Men really do “still have majority control in government and business.”
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
The fact that many men don’t have power doesn’t negate the fact that the most of the people who do have power are men. We know that these few powerful men actually hurt the interests of men who aren’t like them, who don’t conform to their ideals. If you’ve spent any amount of time in feminist circles you’ll probably have heard the phrase “patriarchy hurts men too” at some point. Feminism doesn’t just help women, it also helps those men who are hurt by our society’s attitudes towards gender.
I used 3 billion instead of 3.5 billion, which is admittedly a bit dated. I also lost a decimal place somewhere. (I should have just used scientific notation.)
But you’re the one who forgot the difference between percents and decimals. 0.000007% of 3.5 billion is actually 245.
So we, er, both fucked up our math. Ideally this would be a moment of shared humility and laughter. Somehow I don’t think it’s gonna be.