Over on A Voice for Men, the paramount meeting place for the brave warriors of the Leading Human Rights Movement of the 21st Century, a commenter calling himself Laddition has some uncharacteristically kind words to say about feminists (in this thread). Well, “kind” may not be the right word for it. But Laddition tells us that as awful as the awful feminists are, they’re not quite as bad as are … the rest of the world’s women. Sorry, the “rest of the fem-herd.” He explains:
Naturally, the readers of A Voice for Men greeted these pearls of wisdom with upvotes.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, can someone explain GirlWritesWhat and TyphonBlue and the rest of AVFM’s little FemMRA, er, herd to me again? What exactly draws women to hang out with, and make 45 minute-long videos on the behalf of, dudes who not only hate women but who offer new proof of this hatred on a daily basis?
The average age of women giving birth for the first time in the U.S. is 25. So who are these women over 35 with “baby rabies”?
I think Andrea Dworkin explained FeMRAs quite well in Right Wing Women. These women know damn well that men hate them too and think just as lowly of them as other women, but the “I’m the exception!” fantasy sure is a sweet lullaby if you’d rather pretend like misogyny doesn’t exist.
Honestly, I’ve always suspected some women do that because otherwise they’d be crushed by the totality of our collective misogyny. Not that it makes that stance any less reprehensible, but I do sympathize a bit.
A while ago there was a story about a man who jumped into a tiger enclosure and was mauled. The zoo and tiger didn’t get in trouble as the man had gone to considerable effort to get into the enclosure. The man was therefore considered responsible for what happened to him.
I think MRA women see the male/female relations that way. Men are going to behave a certain way, that can’t be changed. It is therefore women’s job to take that into account with their own actions. Men need pacifying and women who fail at that will suffer. It seems like misandary to me though.
I think the Manosphere has probably collectively outdone the entire mid- to late-1990s in its use of the word “grrrl” and its variants. It’s very effective at conveying their obnoxiousness, their spite, and their backwardness all at once.
I won’t comment on women like GirlWritesWhat nd TyphonBlue and so on, but I have read that a lot of women in the sex industry really hate what they see as an anti-sex-industry streak in some feminist thought.
I remember reading a blog post (or maybe a comment on a blog post?) a while back by a feminist describing how shocked she was at how Feminism was viewed in the sex industry. She had assumed that most of these women would be feminists, but each time she noted, no matter how passively, that she was a feminist, the sex workers (pretty much all women, according to her) would ask her things like “if you have such a problem with the sex industry, why are you talking to us”, and when she clarified that she does *not* have such a problem, and in fact supports sex workers rights, they would respond with some variation of “then why the hell are you a Feminist”. After describing herself as a “Sex-Positive Feminist”, they would then proceed to tell her that this could not exist.
I do remember back when I was “active” on YouTube (more as commentator than anything else)… there were a few women who called themselves Feminists who would post videos attacking YouTubers like Laci Green for “showing too much cleavage” and so on.
I also know a couple strippers who are like the sex workers mentioned above, too. If you talk to them, they sound exactly like Feminists. Both are atheists (obviously there’s not a direct connection between the two… plenty of theists are feminists, as well), and they actually agree that there’s a sexism/misogyny within the atheist community. They both like Schrodinger’s Rapist, they accept the evidence of Rape Culture, Patriarchy, and Kyriarchy, they hate being hit on outside of their work…
They would fit in amazingly well with those of us at Atheism+, in fact.
But they refuse to call themselves Feminists because, and I quote one of them directly: “Feminists hate me. I’m a stripper. According to Feminists, I feed into the Patriarchy, making me a big part of the problem. Because sex work of any kind is wrong. Because we women are apparently not allowed to use our sexuality in any way, shape, or form. I dance and take off my clothes for men. So what if there’s a grand total of zero contact between me and a customer, even in private dances? So what if I have a boyfriend and we have a monogamous, loving relationship? I dance and take off my clothes for men, who pay me to do it. Feminists see me as a bad, evil woman, making things harder for them. Why would I support that?”
I asked about sex-positive Feminism, and the response was thus: “no such thing. It’s an oxy-moron.”
I brought up Greta Christina, and they are, as far as I know, checking her out.
I’m obviously not saying that GirlWritesWhat and TyphonBlue are sex workers. Like I said… I can’t comment on those two. I’m just relaying what I’ve experienced, either second-hand or first-hand.
I should note that neither of those two women I know are FeMRAs (they hate the whole MRM thing as much, if not more: one of them told me about how she once had a group of guys walk in, all of them sporting shirts advertising A Voice for Men; she refused to even acknowledge their existence, which actually pissed a couple of them off, but luckily she has an boss that stood up for her against them and kicked them out).
Again, I’m relaying my of course quite statistically insignificant experience. I should point out that you did ask. :p
What is it with the right wing and applying absolutes to fucking everything? It shouldn’t take much thought to see that a lot of issues have a sensitive gray area, should it?
“…just has no idea how different the masculine frame is to theirs.”
What the hell is he on about? Men and women being built differently? What’s that got to do with anything? Or is he pulling the same line as one of our late unlamented trolls (and the caveman reference makes me think he is) in saying men are naturally violent, unfaithful, etc etc, because they are physically built in such-and-such a way?
Some of the rants these guys come up with are starting to sound more and more like bad acid trips. Seriously, WTF is he on about, and would it make more sense if the reader was high?
The only way this particular rant makes any sense is if we assume that by “frame” he doesn’t mean body type but way of seeing the world, and he’s just too poor a writer to make that clear. Not that the rant would then make sense, but it would be on a standard level of MRA weirdness rather than a look-I-can-fly-and-also-hear-colors-and-the-chair-is-talking-to-me level of acid-induced babble.
“Feminists see me as a bad, evil woman, making things harder for them. Why would I support that?”
I have NEVER heard a feminist, no matter how radical, describe a stripper or sex worker as a “bad, evil woman”. I have, on the other hand, heard plenty of conservative and religious types do this. Wake up to yourself, women (and Nathan).
Yeah, I wondered if that’s what he meant – and wouldn’t it be typical of the manosphere’s collective inabilty to grasp that words have meanings for him to misuse it that way? “Masculine frame” says “male body/skeletal structure/musculature” to me. I has a niggling suspicion I’m not alone in that. But no, this pillock can’t be bothered/hasn’t the nous to say “masculine mental outlook” or “worldview” or whatever. Not that there is such a thing, but try telling MRAs that people aren’t hiveminds.
PS is that the misandrist chair that’s talking to him?
Mostly it just comes off as sour grapes from a d00d who refuses to accept that those women actually did GTOW and liked it. It must be unpossible! It simply has to be!
@cassandrasays:
Nope
They can’t very well come right out and call it what it is. The abusers world view. Too many people know exactly what that is.
You think this shit is confusing normally, try reading it when you’ve just been abruptly woken from a nap by a friend knocking on your door like I was. My brain kept trying to force it to make sense using normal people logic, and then I remembered that an MRA wrote it and gave up.
Does Fem-Shepard watch over the Fem-Herd?
With these guys it’s either “all men as desperately lonely, and women won’t have them” or “all women are desperately lonely, and men won’t have them”, and yet somehow people in the real world continue to have sex, get in relationships and have kids.
GWW is an even bigger woman-hater than Elam, which is quite an accomplishment.
GWW andTyphonBLue are but from the same cloth as JtO. The only platform where their ridiculous theories would be given any (positive) attention is the MRM. Therefore, it is to the MRM that they gravitate.
Yo-de-le yo-de-le yo-de-le hee-hoo!
Dammit. Now I’ve got The Sound of Music in my head.
@Nathan: I have a hard time believing most of what you’ve written and I question your motives (your insistence on capitalizing Feminists is just one reason I’m suspicious), but a few points:
1) The slut-shaming of women is a common function of a patriarchal society. That includes the shaming of sex workers as well as the more ordinary shaming of women as you’ve described in You Tube comments. There are indeed feminists who feel that the sex industry is exploitative of women, but the type of comments you’re talking about sound like they were said back in the 1980’s. Feminists today are much more likely to discuss issues of sex trafficking, child prostitution and other criminal facets of the sex industry which are in fact still extremely exploitative of women and children.
2) You may know “a few strippers who say xyz” but so do I. In fact, I went to school with a woman who stripped to pay her way through college — and she was an outspoken feminist who was in several of my women’s studies classes. What does this mean? It means nothing. Individuals have opinions and anecdotes are not data.
3) Many women are wary of calling themselves feminists because it’s turned into an insult, much the way that liberal has. For most young women, there was never a time when the word “feminazi” did not exist in our popular culture, for instance.
I think some of the MRA women have miserable personal lives and Paul Elam and JtO see them as very useful for their ends and so they feel important. As long as they are willing to be used, Elam and JtO will use them. As for GWW, she is a lot like Elam and JtO as far as their narcissism. They all love to hear themselves talk and drone on and on and on and on and on. I’ve watched a couple of videos for each one a long time ago. They’re boors – all of them.
Also…I’m not convinced that GWW is actually a girl.
Ooooh! Can it be my FemShep? She was pretty bad-ass by ME3 and I think she could do a good job leading us.
Uhm, maybe it’s because the MRA doesn’t hate women?
They hate feminism as a political ideology, to be certain. But surely you don’t believe that hating feminism is the same as hating women? Not all women are feminists. A sizable number of women do NOT identify as feminists. Saying that the MRA hates women because they hate a specific political ideology is like saying all Mormons are republicans because Mitt Romney is, or that disagreeing with Romney’s political beliefs means you hate Mormons.
Silliness.