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.
Women judge men on their humour-making abilities, and take it as a sign of good genes, cognitive capacity, and a well-nurtured upbringing, where a surplus of resources allowed the man to develop a sense of humour as well as survive. Given that men’s sperm only takes two months to produce, what happened before that shouldn’t really matter as much for women as what women have been doing their whole lives should matter to men – as women are born with eggs, so any unhealthy things in her whole life might effect her egg quality – therefore, judging FEMALE humour as an indicator of good genes, intelligence, upbringing, and as an indicator of a historic surplus of resources, should be more important to men than we currently recognize.
I read an article in New Scientist I think, two years or so ago, indicating that any mutations present in a sperm (due to environmental factors etc, i.e. the man’s lifestyle) are somewhat cancelled out when combined with the female’s egg, where as female egg mutations due to such factors are carried forward – so it might be relatively more important to judge women’s personalities for entertainment value than men’s, as if women have nasty, rough or merely neutral personalities, it might indicate a similarly unhealthy poor quality life, for her, and her eggs.
So, maybe it’s really important to encourage men to select women a bit more on how much they can make us laugh, rather than just physical appearance.
Real feminists might get this.
“judging FEMALE humour as… an indicator of a historic surplus of resources”
On what possible grounds do you believe that only rich people tell jokes? Your grasp of reality is seriously tattered. People who were hungry as children don’t lose the ability to be witty.
Oh, and feminism has fuck all to do with optimising the quality of eggs, because women not being breeding machines is the whole point.
seriously, so is it just gonna be all ‘women suck’ all the time now? have you given up on actually doing anything constructive?
Even so viola, research has shown that even those who don’t wish to have children but are not asexual tend to select their partners as if they were going to have children.
And Tom is totally correct that women judge men on their humor making abilities.Humor is very much a social device and a good sense of humor often correlates strongly with good social skills[something that >90% of women find attractive. I would know as I have bad social skills and this really turns off most women I’ve met].
I love it! An attempt to shoehorn ‘sense of humour’ into evopsych blather!
“Ug look like he could spear mighty mammoth. But Gronk look like he could laugh at mammoth! Me marry Gronk.”
Bonus: “I read an article in New Scientist I think, two years or so ago, ” Almost a citation! Almost! Keep trying, you’ll get there.
@ NomNom – “Even so viola, research has shown that even those who don’t wish to have children but are not asexual tend to select their partners as if they were going to have children. ”
Or, alternatively, that when evopsych yahoos decide that mate selection = babies they’re flat wrong, and this is why there’s no great difference between mate selection amongst those who wish to have children and those who don’t?
I am not commenting on how people choose their partners. I am saying that Tom Martin’s blather about how real feminists would understand how important it is to encourage men to choose on his preferred criteria, because it maybe might possibly somehow be an indicator of reproductive health, is nonsensical, because feminism doesn’t prioritise choosing partners according to their reproductive health.
Try to keep up.
Viola,
Please work on your humour-generating skills and get back to us.
Women like men with a sense of humour therefore it’s in their biology? Seriously, Tom, just click on over to your wiki list of fallacies and find the one that matches.
tomTroll: There are certain unmentionables for academic feminism, which renders it unmentionable.
Circular logic is circular: Academic feminism has certain unmentionables which makes it unmentionable!
Only to you, Tom, Tom, Tom, only to you. Academic feminists mention it all the time.
*and get paid for doing so ahahahahahahahahahahahaha*
Hey Tommy boy–work on your money generating skills and get back to us. That court bill ain’t gonna pay itself.
Tom, you need to actually have some semblance of a sense of humor before you’re fit to judge it in others. And laughing every time someone says that women suck doesn’t count.
If I was an expert on humour generation myself, I would not be making a documentary on it.
I only want to do things which are interesting and a challenge to me.
I have a much shorter ring finger for instance, whilst most comedians have longer ring fingers, indicating they were exposed to more testosterone during gestation, and after being born.
The longer a ring finger, the shorter the punch line.
So to me, it is interesting to see how people who don’t have the highest testosterone nevertheless manage to be reasonably quick-witted.
Women have 14 times less testosterone than men I heard, so it is a miracle that any woman would be able to generate humour considering their low testosterone.
Perhaps women’s brains are inherently more capable of humour production than men, making up for the fourteen times lower testosterone levels.
I think women could be funnier though, and suspect prostitution in all its forms holds them back. Look at Islam for instance. The Whoran actually recommends women should not be too quirky in public.
But then, the higher level mission, is not just to encourage women to generate humour, but humour which is not misandric – as sexist humour generates sexism.
@Tom
I imagine there are lots of things that are a challenge to you. Making money, finding women who aren’t wh*res, sitting in chairs…I could go on forever.
I have just come up with a theory about why women aren’t as funny as men on average. I believe that when women are with other women, they do laugh, but at inane non-jokes. They’re laughing at how terrific they think it is to be women and not even bother coming up with actually funny jokes – their attitudes, it seems, being not so much an appreciation of how “funny ha ha” they’re being, more a celebration of how “funny whore whore” they’re being.
That is not an actual conversation between women. That is a yogurt commercial you saw.
Testosterone = humour? Seriously Tom, it’s not the hard chairs making your arse hurt, it’s all the things you keep pulling out of it.
@ Tom- You jumped from vaguely sexist hypothesizing to assuming your hypothesis as an absolute truth without all that kind of important ‘testing’ and ‘proof’ in between. Are you allergic to reason?
“Please work on your humour-generating skills and get back to us.”
Why Tom, it almost sounds like you’re trying to insult me into shutting up because you can’t justify your arguments. But that couldn’t be true of such an intelligent and thoughful individual, so I’ll restate myself in smaller words for you.
Why do you think that wit is indicative of long-term health?
Why do you think feminists should encourage men to choose their partners according to reproductive potential?
Women have testosterone too, you know. Just not as much as men.
I do know some funny women. They aren’t common but they’re out there…..Curiously enough, they are not feminists yet they aren’t submissive women who believe in traditional gender roles either! What they are, are women who don’t take womanhood too seriously. These are the kind of chicks who can laugh at offensive, politically incorrect, punch-down humor instead of getting butthurt.
“Women have testosterone too, you know. Just not as much as men.”
Anyone else having a sarcastic reply overload here?
Ohmigod, my ring finger is longer than my index finger. Why, I must be a super-secret comedian deep down inside. I know that Tom says that women aren’t funny, but I suppose it’s really digit ratio that counts.
I hate to bring something like facts or reason into this (after all, I wouldn’t want the truth to crush my new burgeoning career as a comedian), but does this information apply to female comedians? Most comedians are men. Most men have longer index fingers. Should we be surprised that most comedians have longer ring fingers? Tom, great scientists that you are, surely you realize that your argument here would be a lot more convincing if you could show that female comedians also have longer ring fingers. Link me to that study, and maybe we’ll take you seriously.
And, Tom, I realize that your strength lies in being a Great Scientist and Noble Warrior Against Misandry, and clearly I can’t ask you to be all things to all people, but I think that blaming your complete failure at getting a sense of humor on the length of your ring finger just might be a bit unfair.
And of course, Tom has citations for this correlation between humor and digit ratio.
. . .
Well, I’m sure they exist. Somewhere. In Tom’s imagination, if nothing else.
Um, wouldn’t that seem to indicate that being quick-witted isn’t caused by high testosterone. I mean, I know that I’m not a great scientist like Tom is, but I would think that this rather undermines his whole hypothesis.
So what you’re saying, MsN, is a sense of humour=laughing at stuff you find funny. And you find sexist stuff funny. So women suffer from a lack of sense of humour because they refuse to laugh at sexist jokes.
I love how MSN’s working definition of humor is “laughing at my sexist jokes.”
If you want to see some actual humor, watch pretty much any episode of Parks and Recreation that was written by Amy Poehler. Particularly “The Fight” from Season 3. Poehler is both a feminist and funny as hell.
Wrong, Vitamin D. I find crude humor funny, but I know that many women refrain from laughing at it(even when it’s totally not sexist, like fart jokes)because they’re more self-conscious about what others think of them and flaunting social norms can warrant disapproval from others. But there is plenty of offensive humor out there that has nothing to do with sex-ism.