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.
Cassandra, Crunk Feminist Collective is a WOC feminist blog. Joe clearly cannot read for comprehension, that post does not say nearly what he thinks it does. Even if it did, I’ll point him to Exhibit A, which is any Spearhead or AVfM article ever for being a thousand times worse.
I actually like the Crunk Feminist Collective; it’s a collection of feminists of color writing particularly, but not exclusively about issues of feminism, racism, and intersectionality. I don’t like it as much as Racialicious but there are some good writers and some interesting posts. I read the post The First Joe is referencing and it remains incredibly problematic. The author, crunkashell, is really… reaching for something with that piece. And she’s missing by quite a bit. She wrote a follow up piece in attempt to explain her original post (always a bit ridiculous in my mind) and clarify her original position.
I guess The First Joe neglected to mention how much she was taken to task by the blog’s regular followers for her original essay, right? How there was no consensus about what she’d written and strong, if respectful, disagreement by male and female feminists, alike?
Of course he did.
How’s that tinfoil hat fitting? Have you met NWO? You two should go off and talk about the lizard Illuminati or something.
I actually have heard of the Crunk Feminist Collective; it’s a site aimed at feminists of colour, and while I don’t read it regularly they’ve had some good pieces in the past. To Joe’s credit, his “one feminist said a bad thing, therefore feminism is bad!” example is a current website, rather than an out-of-context quote from Dworkin or something.
Of course, he’s still stupid as hell, but hey! It’s nice to see MRAs at least mixing things up with their “all feminists are responsible for every feminist ever” schtick.
The Creflo Dollar stuff was pretty intense.
this is not actual an excuse for the level of incompetence the mrm has displayed. or do you think the early feminists were as dismal at sloganeering as your ill-fated attempt the other day? (hint: they werent)
Oh, is the actual post worth reading? I’m not even reading Joe’s links in general since, well, he’s a dumbass.
Even if I did say what he thinks it does, I’d still say “fix your own movement first”, since that’s where he has more of a chance to effect change. He could start with the people on Reddit who cheerleaded Confessions of a Serial Rapist.
@Argenti – as I have no doubt that you’d assume I’m an asshole purely on the strength of offering any critique of how men are treated in society…. meh.
@ Nobinayamu
One of my favorite things with MRAs is when they pull out something problematic said by a feminist (usually on Jezebel, which for some reason they think is a hotbed of radical feminism), and use it as an example of What Feminists Think, despite the comments being a shitstorm of “WTF did I just read?”.
@Joe, have you been to Google Groups? You might want to check out soc.men, a usenet group that’s been around for quite a number of years and was a hangout for MRAs. The MRM is not “only a few years old.”
So why do the feminists who agree with that article get to define what feminism is, but not the one’s who disagree.
I’m looking through the comments of that article right now. There are a lot of commenters disagreeing with the original post. And they aren’t all “taking [the author] very gently to task.”
For instance:
So how come you are fine with letting the original post define feminism for you, but not any of the commenters explaining that it goes against the fundamental principles of feminism?
It’s interesting that you paraphrased the first two examples rather than providing actual quotes, almost as though a direct source would reveal that they aren’t saying anything like what you claim. Feel free to prove me wrong and show me where Biden or Obama actually said anything of the sort, of course; I can’t be arsed to do a search just to prove that you’re a liar.
Regarding the third quote, you know that war almost always kills and harms enormous numbers of noncombatants too, right? What am I saying, of course you don’t; that would require doing actual research.
“In contrast with establishment feminism that has been well funded from many external sources (including gov’t in general, C1A (Steinem), and the Rockefeller Foundation) and has been going so long that governments and academia are ram jammed full of them.”
C1A? Guys, I think we have a Pell incident in progress.
He thinks that Steinem was a pawn of the CIA? OK, this guy REALLY needs to make friends with Owly.
Kind of funny that he initially tried to come in and present himself as a reasonable, moderate MRA, huh? That never does seem to last very long.
“@Argenti – as I have no doubt that you’d assume I’m an asshole purely on the strength of offering any critique of how men are treated in society…. meh.”
No, no, you missed the point — you’re an asshole because you think you can meta-mock mockery by taking it seriously, while playing the following round of Spot That Fallacy!!
Argument to moderation (false compromise, middle ground, fallacy of the mean) – assuming that the compromise between two positions is always correct
“You’re both wrong and I’m better than either of you!” won’t get you anywhere on the internet (or in general).
Slightly random, but that rogue quotation mark in the title is bugging me. >.< I'm not normally bugged by mistakes, but it's like it's flashing in giant neon letters every time I look at the post. 😛
Excuse me? The Crunk Feminist Collective is a well-known, reputable feminist site. Futrelle regularly cherry-picks quotes from random individuals over on Reddit to hold up as representative of the Movement.
Your hypocrisy is palpable.
Excuse me, but did Steele just admit that such a thing as a reputable feminist site exists? I’m fairly sure that must be misandry.
“Excuse me?”
LULZ FOREVER.
Glad some one else decided to click through. That post spawned a very interesting discussion; hardly a block of monolithic support. Her follow up was better written. Still fucked up, but more cogent. In a lot ways, crunkashell was expressing a position not far removed from what seems to define a lot of what passes for grievance among some MRAs.
Specifically, “I’m awesome, how come I’m not getting the sex that I want! It’s not fair!” Despite her protests and explanations, it doesn’t come across as any less entitled or absurd. I hear what she’s saying and all but not being able to get laid just isn’t a political issue.
Shut the fuck up, Steele. You know good and the hell well you’d never heard of The Crunk Feminist Collective until just now.
Steele old chap, one of the comments Anathema posted called the OP’s position “Creep Factor Bazillion.” Shouldn’t you be freaking out over use of the C-word?
@hellkell – oh, I’m sorry, this is general knowledge, pardon me for waking you up from your complacent slumber:
“In May 1975, Redstockings, a radical feminist group, raised the question of whether Steinem had continuing ties with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[26][27] Though she admitted to having worked for a CIA-financed foundation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Steinem denied any continuing involvement.[28]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem
see also:
“story appeared in the “Village Voice” on May 21, 1979.
…..
‘In 1958, Steinem was recruited by CIA’s Cord Meyers to direct an “informal group of activists” called the “Independent Research Service.” This was part of Meyer’s “Congress for Cultural Freedom,” which created magazines like “Encounter” and “Partisan Review” to promote a left-liberal chic to oppose Marxism. Steinem, attended Communist-sponsored youth festivals in Europe, published a newspaper, reported on other participants, and helped to provoke riots. One of Steinem’s CIA colleagues was Clay Felker. In the early 1960’s, he became an editor at Esquire and published articles by Steinem which established her as a leading voice for women’s lib. In 1968, as publisher of New York Magazine, he hired her as a contributing editor, and then editor of Ms. Magazine in 1971. Warner Communications put up almost all the money although it only took 25% of the stock. Ms. Magazine’s first publisher was Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive ….'”
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/310075.shtml
Also:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1M9EAly2hog&refer=home
Re: general funding of feminism, including Rockefeller Foundation:
“…..research and publication in Women’s Studies has been supported by foundations and federal agencies. In the past few years, at least two major sources of funding of dissertation research have been specifically designated for Women’s Studies (Woodrow Wilson Women’s Research Grants; American Association of University Women). The National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, National Institute of Education, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institute of Mental Health, and other agencies have given both support and visibility to research on women’s studies. …”
http://www.umich.edu/~womenstd/background.htm
and
“The Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies… In 1991 the Institute was awarded a three-year Rockefeller Foundation Grant. The Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships allowed us to have in residence visiting scholars ….”
http://www.rochester.edu/college/WST/SBAI/history.html
^And those were just the first two, purely academic (non-MRM) links from the first page of 1,000,000 plus hits for a google of “women’s studies Rockefeller foundation”
“Shouldn’t you be freaking out over use of the C-word?”
Not when it applies to women.