Oh, Reddit, where the demographics are so skewed that virtually every discussion amongst and/or about women ultimately gets taken over by dudes doing the old “what about the dudes” routine. It’s no secret that the TwoXChromosomes subreddit has long been overrun with MRAs and FeMRAs. And now it’s become pretty clear that the Feminism subreddit has gone MRA as well.
If you want all the details of the drama, here’s a thread in the subreddit in which the feminists who’ve stuck with the subreddit take on the MRAs and MRA-symps amongst the mods.
Check out the Feminisms and SRSWomen subreddits if you want to discuss feministy stuff on Reddit without having to deal with endless derailing from MRAs and other shitlords.
EDITED TO ADD: More links:
SRS takes on the whole mess (lots of useful links).
SRS links to r/feminism mods defending MRAs
An r/feminism thread about the recent Captain Awkward posts about creeps that is, naturally, full of endless hang-wringing about the evils of “creep-shaming.”
(Thanks, Cliff, for the links.)
So, WTF is going on exactly? Did an MRA become a mod of an established subreddit, or is this the culmination of their brilliant “let’s make fake feminist blogs and write unfeminist things and giggle” plan?
This is just depressing. Feminists should storm The Spearhead and other MRA spaces and bombard them with messages that women are people.
I usually don’t spend much time on Reddit. It’s just a confusing, nasty place.
@aworldanonymous
Good for you. You give me hope that MRA shitlordery doesn’t have to be permanent.
I got banned from SRS once because I posted in antiSRS — even though I was arguing with someone there, SRS does indeed have a bot that automatically bans everyone who posts there. I messaged the mods and was quickly unbanned.
I was banned from SRS too! Same reason as aworldanonymous, although I was just arguing with anti-SRS. I just made another account for SRS porpoises; the original was for r/mr and shit like that in the first place, and SRS is just a sweet, sweet bonus to the general malaise of reddit.
What I took away from the “creep” discussion can be summed up as follows:
“I want sex but I keep getting called creepy by the hot chicks I want sex with. They’re oversensitive and bad by calling my behavior creepy. Nothing I do is wrong so the problem is with the oversensitive hot chicks I want sex with. Just because I behave like a disturbed douchenozzle is no reason for them to creep-shame me. Now stop creep-shaming and give me sex.”
@Freitag
It’s amazing how entitled some men feel when it comes to “pussy.” On the RooshV blog and forum they constantly refer to “pussy” as if it is some nonliving commodity, just floating out there ready to be taken.
Some tool over there blames women for the Oklahoma City bombing for not giving Timothy McVeigh any “pussy.” Sickening.
http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-15118.html
At the time I was kind of caught up in the being confused by all of the references I didn’t get, the drama, and the banning policy, now I’m less bothered by the former things, and understand the reason for the third.
I will bet a million dollars without even clicking the link that someone in that “anti-creep shaming” thread is saying “But creepy guys probably have Asperger’s! How dare you be creeped out!”
I see Reddit is the same shithole as always. That’s depressing.
I think this sometimes. I do like the idea of making them as uncomfortable in their own spaces as they want us to be in ours. But I figure:
1) The Spearhead and the like are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, it’d be a total waste of time. MRA-baiting is entertainment, not activism, and I never want to lose sight of that.
2) They might lash out at the feminists involved. We limit our responses to MRAs here to angry comments and the occasional ban–nobody tries to dox them or start long campaigns of harassment on their Facebooks/personal blogs/etc. I don’t trust Spearheaders to do us the same courtesy.
3) We can’t really hurt them without violating our own principles. We can say “women are people,” but we can’t say “men aren’t people.” We can say “rape of women is real,” but we can’t say “most male rape is false accusations.” We can say “women deserve to control our own bodies,” but we can’t say “women deserve to control men’s bodies.”
We can’t deliver the real gut-punching attacks and still be decent people, so we’ll never really be able to make them feel the way they make us feel.
@fembot, one of the saddest things I ever read was a comment made shortly after the Sodini killings. The poster opined that the message everyone should take away from this senseless bullshit was that women ought to put out more often, and include the creeps. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist of it. Sodini, who IIRC claimed to have been rejected by 30 million women, was the real victim and women should take the shootings as a lesson to give up more pussy.
Ugh. I’ve made myself sick now. I’ll go watch the news and cheer up.
And before some troll can call me ableist: I have Asperger’s. My voice is near constantly monotone, I tend to stare without realizing it or avoid eye contact all together, and my special interests include horror movies and medieval torture devices. I know damn well what it’s like to unintentionally creep people out, and guess what? It’s my own damn fault when I do, and those I’m upsetting shouldn’t have to put up with it just because of my disorder.
Lauralot – I think calling people “creepy” for having AS is a wrong usage of “creep,” not proof that “creep” should never be used.
It’s like how saying “women who have abortions are murderers” is wrong, but doesn’t mean that the word “murderer” is itself sexist and should never be used.
Ok, I apologized and now I’m unbenned.
Sorry if I was unclear: I’m not trying to say that people with ASD are creeps, I mean that, while we can creep people out unintentionally due to misunderstanding social cues and what not, it’s still not an excuse. The “creepy guys just have Asperger’s” complainers are trying to say that it’s fine to invade someone else’s space and upset them if you have the disorder, and it isn’t.
@Cliff Pervocracy
“If men want to “think for themselves” about whether feminism is a good thing, they can do it somewhere besides a dedicated feminism forum.”
Men can say what they want where ever they want. Don’t ya just long for the pre-internet days where there were no comment section in articles? Oh those days of carte blanche where women ridiculed men without having to be ridiculed in return. Ahhh, the good old days.
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@Tulgey Logger
“I suspect this may have something to do with how Owly’s definition of Marxist includes Ayn Rand.”
I’ve never read any Ayn Rand. Maybe I will.
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@fembot
“This is just depressing. Feminists should storm The Spearhead and other MRA spaces and bombard them with messages that women are people.”
Of course women are people, but that doesn’t mean your opinions are worth anything or have any value. Ohhhh, you expect to be taken seriously “because” you’re a woman. This seems to be the problem with modern day women. Men are ridiculing you not because you’re women. you’re being ridiculed for the things you say and do.
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@skeptifem
““what if we are both drunk” is such a stupid question. Its like asking if its okay to drive drunk if the pedestrian you hit is drunk too. Somehow I think their tiny brains could figure out how meaningless that question is.”
How is it a stupid question? If both parties are drunk, then both parties are either guilty of rape or neither is. Otherwise what you’re saying is the man is responsible for both their actions.
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@Ugh
“Both guys were so clearly over the line, had been told they were over the line, and kept on creeping.”
Who cares? I mean really, who cares? If a woman feels a guy is being creepy, but the guy doesn’t feel he’s being creepy, why are her feelings correct and his feelings incorrect. Are we defaulting to woman is correct? That’s exactly what you’re saying.
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“Honestly, I think some of their rules are too strict, but I respect the fact that they enforce them fairly and zealously, and that the ultimate point of the rules is “no, you can’t be even a little bit sexist/homophobic/ableist here.”
HAHAHAHAHA. Sexist is whatever any woman feels at any point in time, therefore it has no meaning. Homophobic is a non-existant. If someone finds the actions of gays repulsive that’s there choice and they have every right to voice it. What’s next? Do I have to love brussle sprouts as well and swear to adore them? On no, abliest!!!
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This is why modern day women are ridiculed. Not because you’re women, but because you make no sense.
I have Aspergers, and what I decided to do about it is to start living in residence at university in order to force myself to be in a social environment 24/7 so that I can force myself to learn how to be the adorable quirky kind of awkward instead of the creepy kind of awkward.
Now my only worry about SRS is that I’m not witty enough…T_T.
But yeah, Aspergers isn’t an excuse for creepiness, Aspies can learn to not be creepy, hell, I already sort of have, I’m just really really shy most of the time.
@Lauralot: if liking horror movies and weird shit (you should see some of my old dermatology books) is wrong/creepy, I don’t want to be right. Those jackholes are using AS as cover for their bad behavior.
How the hell did MRAs come to run r/feminism?
To be fair, I’m sure my love for torture methods would have gone over better if I didn’t to start conversations with strangers in the past by saying “Hi! What’s your favorite form of torture? I like the pear, but there’s debate about whether or not it was really used. How it worked was…”
@lauralot89
Can we be friends? 😀
Absolutely!
I have a mild historical interest in torture and executions… and that sounds like an awesome conversation opener.
When I moved countries, because words have different meanings and some are offensive in some countries and not others, I made a general rule that if someone finds a word offensive then I shouldn’t use it within reason. I can understand why men don’t like being called a creep, even if they are behaving in a way that makes people uncomfortable. I am happy to stop using the word creepy, however I worry that the people who are against it get very angry at comments like “please don’t do this it makes me uncomfortable”.
I think the word creepy is ambiguous, it can often be difficult to articulate what exactly you don’t like about somebody because that would be unacceptable so it is sort of a go to word. It kind of covers things like they wouldn’t leave me alone when I dropped strong hints, they were overly forward when we first talked etc. Mentioning that you don’t like these things isn’t likely to go down well as you will be encouraged to give them a chance.
Interestingly, very few of the comments seem to refer to people being called creepy to their faces, in fact most creep shaming seems to be people not responding well to being talked to. However, that may be misinterpreting others experiences.
I have definitely been creepy before and it is something I’m trying to work on in future. Acknowledging your behaviour is wrong and trying to change it can be difficult.
Well, if they don’t like “creepy,” how about, “lecherous,” “deranged,” “overbearing,” “tiresome” or “obsessive.”