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?
Judgy, you are disingenuous at best. MRAs routinely express violent rhetoric about women. There is an example of this a mere two threads ago on this very blog.
I’m starting a movement and calling it Women Going Their Own Way And Sometimes Men Are There Too But Only If They Don’t Suck Like MRAs And Gender Queer People Can Come Too And We Have All The Internet Kitties So Hah.
I think I’ll call it basic human decency for short.
Judgybitch has been here before and is most likely not here in good faith. FYI.
OH GOD please tell me BioWare didn’t name hir Shepard because the Federation-expy galactic government is made up of sheeple. Please. I want to think better of BioWare than that they’re people who use the word sheeple seriously.
>Uhm, maybe it’s because the MRA doesn’t hate women?
Psch, go read some of their blogs. They’re writing plenty about how terrible women in general are.
@leeloodm “With these guys it’s either “all men as desperately lonely, and women won’t have them because women suck” or “all women are desperately lonely, and men won’t have them because women suck””
Wanted to add that important bit to your already great analysis
@whataboutthemoonz
What constitutes good faith? I love women and obviously hate misogyny. Who is FOR misogny? That’s like being pro-child abuse, and some people ARE (hello religious wingnuts), but hating misogny does not automatically equal loving feminism.
Anyone can read my blog, just like anyone can read this one.
They post Youtube videos hosted by someone who appears to be of the female persuasion. It’s either GWW or someone who the writer-GWW gets to be the face of GWW. Given how much the MRM distrust women, why would someone posting to an audience of MRAs pretend to be female?
I always had a hard time understanding how some people are all, “I love women, misogyny is bad, but feminism? Ewwwww.” I have to assume what they know about the movement came from someone who hates or misunderstands the movement.
@ aim33… it honestly took me by surprise, too. I haven’t heard back from them after mentioning Greta Christina, so we’ll see. But that’s the impression they had.
@ blitzgal… *sigh* I can’t make you believe me. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
Sorry for capitalizing the “f” in feminism. I’m used to doing it, and never had anyone mention it until now. I’ll change that going forward.
1. I know this. I wasn’t relating what I thought… I was relating what I’ve been told. Two different things.
2. Hence why I called that post my “statistically insignificant experience”. “Statistically insignificant” were the operative words, there. I wanted to answer Dave’s question to the best of my abilities, and I can only do that with anecdotes since… you know… I’ve never conducted a statistical study on this kind of thing and wouldn’t know where to begin even if I wanted to. My interests as an Anthropology student are in fanaticism and modern music culture, not FeMRAs.
Also, for the record, I also know strippers who call themselves feminists… but I only “know” them from online interaction.
3. I’m also well aware of that.
@ judgybitch… Have you ever *read* the Men’s Rights subreddit or A Voice for Men? How can *anybody* read those places and still say “they don’t hate women”? Examples are all over Manboobz. You should look.
I, for one, welcome our new zombie feminist overladies.
They’re good women, unless all those other yucky feminist women. They even get invited to the super secret misogyny treehouse with the “No gurlz allowed” sign.
Okay Judgy, let’s look at the OP right here, then. Quote: “the bigger problem for society is the rest of the fem-herd.” In discussing non-feminists, he literally refers to them as a herd of chattel, and decrees that they are even more dangerous than feminists. Nope, no hatred there.
Awww, Judgy. The first line in the quoted text of this post proves you wrong. You should probably read a post before you comment on it. You’re adorable, though, keep it up. <3
blitzgal: I think your point 1 is answered by point 3: If they already have a distorted view of feminism, then they’re less likely to voluntarily wade through current feminist thought, and more likely to buy distortions from other anti-feminists distorting current views. Same sort of reality bubble we see in Fox News Conservatives. Local pockets are also more likely to share views socially for similar conclusions.
I think his solution to the issue he stated, pointing out Greta Christina’s work, is an excellent one.
I just have to say: TITLE OF THIS POST? WIN!
*listens happily to Julie Andrews singing in my head*
I HEARTZ Julie Andrews.
@Nathan, the part of that story that I found hard to believe was the idea that MRAs get together and go to strip clubs in their AVFM t-shirts and that the strippers see their t-shirts and know what they mean by them. In college, I used to go places with friends wearing things to advertise our internet subcultures, but we really had no illusions about other people recognizing or caring what we were trying to advertise. It seems like a long shot that anyone would.
re: the OP, “until the herd wakes up and realizes how much feminists actually care about their real interests…”
What real interests are those? And whose interests are feminists supporting instead?? Equal pay and health care and bodily autonomy are elitist feminist interests? whereas real world fem-herd interests are…. what exactly?!
@Falconer
I thought it was symbolic of the fact that you’re gathering all these people up and keeping them together. Which I guess is sort of comparing them to sheep, sort of, but I saw it as more the ‘protection and guidance’ kind of shepard than the ‘you sheep are too dumb to think for yourselves’ kind of shepard.
I really like BioWare too… I couldn’t get past the weird combat system in Dragon Age: Origins but I got Dragon Age II the other day and I love it.
I wonder what it’s like to hold a conversation with MRAs in real life. How does it go? Do they wear their hatred and misogyny right out on their sleeve, or do they hold it back until you’re in a conversation and suddenly they’re talking about fem-herds and cock carousels and it’s like in a horror movie when the protagonist realizes they’re talking to the serial killer but instead of a serial killer it’s an asshole on the Internet and instead of a torture chamber in the basement, it’s thousands of AVFM posts?
@Zanana Fair enough. I never confirmed the truth of that. It’s what she told me. It doesn’t surprise me that she specifically knows what A Voice for Men is, though, as she’s ranted about them in the past. *She* recognized the shirts. Whether anyone else did or not I have no idea.
I’d just like to jump in and mention that I’m a feminist who also happens to be a sex-worker. I am in the UK, I think possibly we have different laws over some aspects of sex-work, for a start my particular part in it is legal – I’m an escort which is perfectly above board in the eyes of the law. Nobody coerced me, or twisted my arm, or made me feel bad about my choice to do this. I think there’s a lot of confusion between coercion and trafficking and someone’s personal choice. Us whores ain’t all on crack and being controlled by pimps. I’m independent and drug-free. Woohoo for me, or something!
I know a fair few other feminist sex-workers of differing genders. I’m not sure if it’s an across-the-pond thing as to how sex-workers are often viewed by others, so apologies if I’ve been confused by cross-pond-sex-worker-politics.
Good faith would be coming to a blog devoted to mocking misogyny and NOT defending misogynists, maybe, especially on a blog post in which the people you are defending explicitly say things which are obviously misogyny to anyone who knows what that word means.
> Also…I’m not convinced that GWW is actually a girl.
Um, can we maybe assume that if people say they’re a gender that they actually are that gender, it’s just that it’s a common way to deny trans identities.
(also not sure how to do blockquotes hopefully this is it)
It’s funny pick this as an example, since there are far more republicans among Mormons than any other religious group in the country. The difference, of course, is that liberal Mormons can’t simply walk away from their church and hold on to their religious beliefs. There’s nothing comparable keeping MRAs that don’t hate women in that den of misogynists. They’d have to think that feminism was so incredibly awful that it was worth immersing themselves in all that hatred just to rail against it.
“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).
I haven’t heard it couched in those terms, but I’ve heard a few older, second-wave era feminists be negative towards them. I remember actually (at the time I was a stripper) speaking on a local feminist radio show from that perspective.Before we went on the air, one of the other guests told me “I don’t support the mayor’s treatment of you, but I want you to know that I’m opposed to what you’re doing and think it harms the feminist movement as a whole.” This was on the heels of a spate of police abuses.
But agreed, it’s important to know these are NOT the opinions of all feminists.
A Brief Epidemiology:
Ginatingles
MRA MRSA (Staphylocockitup aureus)
Foot-in-mouth
Vampirism
Squealiac
Fungus, Mysterious
“baby rabies”