So apparently I’m way off base with this “misogyny” thing. For example, I have been under the impression that I have been finding misogynistic stuff in the Men’s Rights subreddit, like, all the time. With upvotes, and everything. But evidently I’m wrong.
Because now ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit mods, has done a very scientific study that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that, well, whatever misogyny is there is officially not a big damn deal.
Ig explains his protocol:
I did a quick scan of the first 400 comments on the list (100/page, 4 pages in). I scanned for words like “cunt” and “whore”, and read the context of these. I looked for the words “woman” and “women”, and read the context of these. I looked for “suffrage” and “vote” also.
I found two comments that used the word “cunt”, one of them was used to describe men, the other to describe a specific woman. The only instances of “whore” were “attention whore”.
There were two comments involving the word “woman” that generalized women with negative stereotypes.
“Suffrage” and “vote” instances did not involve any context that suggested that women did not deserve the right to vote.
How a person defines “hatred of women”, either loosely (suggestive from context, rather than explicit) or strictly (explicit statements), it is pretty clear that out of 400 comments, very few are misogynistic.
Does misogyny exist? Yes. But it does not seem to be a significant contribution to r/MensRights. At best, people are seeing a few comments and focusing on their existence while ignoring the rest.
It’s a lot like that time Michael Richards did that standup routine, and everyone focused on that one word he said, totally ignoring all the other words he used that were totally not racist slurs. I mean, yeah, he said that word a bunch of times, but it still made up a very small percentage of all the words he used that evening.
So that’s that, then. Misogyny, officially not a problem!
Or that would have been that, had Ig not actually posted about his experiment to the subreddit he had just proved was, like, totally non-misogynistic:
Because it turned out that a couple of the fellas had an issue with Ig’s methodology. In particular, that stuff about female suffrage. Because, apparently, you can totally be against women having the right to vote and still not be a misogynist. As zyk0s put it (garnering upvotes in the process):
[T]here’s the matter of female suffrage. I really don’t see how suggesting women should not have been granted the right to vote is misogyny. It might be motivated by it, but not necessarily so, and treating it as such is akin to criminalizing holocaust denial: it’s censorship, pure and simple, and if [1] /r/MR wants to keep calling itself an open space where ideas are not silenced, that attitude has to change.
Our friend Demonspawn went even further(and got a few upvotes himself):
Suggesting that the government works better without the women’s vote is not misogyny. It’s an analysis of the facts and the consequences of allowing women’s suffrage.
Suggesting that women retain the right to vote without the corresponding responsibilities that men face is misandry.
So there you have it. The Men’s Rights subreddit doesn’t have a misogyny problem; if anything, it’s a hotbed of misandry.
Well you had a better comment anyway. 😛
I do notice that most women will laugh at lame jokes to validate the person who told the joke because they happen to like said person. Guys laugh when they’re actually amused and won’t laugh if they aren’t. I’ve told very offensive jokes and in one case the gal thought highly of me and even laughed. Another little tidbit: When browsing womens profiles on okcupid, I notice that most of them use the descriptor “I like to laugh”. 😛
Not surprised Omnom can’t tell the difference between nervous laughter and appreciative laughter.
Also, is anyone else’s Creep-O-Meter ™ dinging at Tom’s “give two women booze then spy on them” thing, or does mine need retuning?
Actually, it’s quite easy to distinguish the 2 ShadetheDruid. But apparently you can’t distinguish appreciative laughter from actual amusement.
Someone needs to make a documentary on you making a documentary, Tom.
It could be all “Exit through the Misogyny shop.” or something much more clever.
@ Shade- Not only is my creep-o-meter going off, but where did this fella get an understanding on research ethics? It’s pretty bad form to deceive your study participants unless it’s absolutely necessary, and I doubt ‘attempting to confirm my sexist prejudices’ isn’t the kind of necessary that tends to pass ethics reviews. Further, Science already answered this question, and the answer is ‘No, men aren’t funnier than women, you really are just being sexist’: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-hartsell/men-arent-funnier-than-women-shut-up_b_1099805.html
Not just not okay, but actively illegal unless he’s obtained signed release forms that explicitly grant him permission to do this. And sometimes even that’s not enough, as the successful prosecution of the producers of Bumfights demonstrated.
You know, I have male friends, and I have female freinds.
And there is a huge variance in people’s wittiness levels. I mean, within the genders. Some people are funny, some people are not. Some of my best friends cannot tell a joke without screwing up the ending for the life of them.
The wittiest person I know happens to be a man. The least witty person I know happens to be a man.
There is a family that has a very high wittiness quotient–men and women.
And, of course, there’s different sorts of humor.
…but I’m sure Tom will be able to fit a proper analysis of this in his video.
Oh, who am I kidding?
This is how it will go.
Even taking Tom’s argument that he speaks for all men at face value, I am still baffled as to why he believes men should be the arbiters of what is or isn’t funny.
@Amused — it’s obviously because women aren’t funny, you see, and so the arbitration of what’s funny and what’s not is perforce left up to the poor, overworked, put-upon men.
So they think Adam Sandler is still funny. I guess you wimminz just don’t have a sense of humor!
/silly
except you didnt actually do any of that shit
Tom is adorable. He’s just so excited that he might finally get a chance to show how boring women are and be vindicated by ¡SCIENCE!
Oh, wait, I forgot this was a grown ass man and not a fucking five year old.
Funny I notice men doing that too at other men and other women. I myself laugh at jokes I do not find funny because sometimes its a nice gesture and I suspect thats pretty common.
Nope pretty sure thats you who can’t read.
Besides didn’t you mention you had a hard time reading people from being autistic.
Inane flak.
The Muff Post and NY Times articles VitD links us to say men ARE funnier than women. True, not by much. Hopefully, identifying gold-digger reservishness, or babyishness, or princessishness as factors for women to eliminate to close the gender humour gap entirely will usher in an age where manboobzers can point to articles or research which find women actually are as funny as or funnier than men – not just crappy false anecdotes in lefty newspapers baring no relation to the research they quote.
Newspapers cotton wooling the truth about gender issues might be another factor effecting women’s humour generating abilities. As the great comedian Bill Burr says “Women are constantly patting themselves on the back. There’s like this tornado of misinformation (swirling around women’s heads), and nobody corrects women because we want to fuck them.”
Where are the youtube videos of female comedians who get as many loud laughs as Bill Burr for instance?
@TomTroll: Please define the meaning of “funny” you are using in your (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA SNORT SNIFFLE CHOKE) “experiment.”
Also, do you understand the difference between “laughing at” (as I am at you), and “laughing with”?
Oh, here’s a peer reviewed article that’s in the cutting edge of humor studies (an actual thing!), i.e. doing internet studies as well!
Note all the stuff the abstract has that TomTroll’s work completely FAILS to have;
‘‘Mars and Venus’’ in Virtual Space: Post-feminist Humor and the Internet
Limor Shifman & Dafna Lemish
ABSTRACT:
Keywords: Humor; Internet; Gender differences; ‘‘Mars and Venus’’; Post-feminism
Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 28, No. 3, August 2011, pp. 253–273
Ithiliana,
If it’s taken feminism 40 years to get around to denying the existence of misandry for instance, then I won’t be including feminist academia in my reading list. There are certain unmentionables for academic feminism, which renders it unmentionable.
@Tom
You do know that Youtube is largely inhabited by misogynist asshats like yourself, right? Serioiusly, stop obsessing about every little thing women say, do, and think. Who are you to police what women find funny? You’re nobody. Get lost.
so, have you dropped the pretense of doing any ‘men’s rights’ now so you can focus full time on the pressing issue of how much women totally suck?
well if you had been throwing these incompetent hissy fits about misandry forty years ago it might have become a thing sooner. but you didnt so we couldnt.
I can’t wait to see the psychological study where “gold-digger reservishness,” “babyishness,” and “princessishness” are identified as variables and controlled for.
Also, dear Tom, if men are found to be slightly funnier than women on average, it is only because you skew the set by being one massive joke.
LOL! You’re silly.
@ Tom- The one percent is negligible, Tom, and the study was sufficient to do what the article intended- to let sexist bigots who want to waste people’s time know that science has asked this question (because it was bored?), and to the researchers’ satisfaction women and men are pretty much equally funny.
So are you measuring humour by how loudly a crowd laughs? That doesn’t seem terribly scientific, Tom. How big are the crowds? What are the demographics of the crowds? Are they drinking? Why can one comedian get a gig at one venue and another cannot? And didn’t you say earlier you were going to secretly (and unethically) record two women in a room? Is there going to be a crowd somewhere laughing at them, Tom? Your measure has so many other variables in it it requires several other research projects in itself. Have you even researched anything before?