When confronted with the simple fact that men hold the overwhelming majority of positions of power in the world – in government, business, culture, and pretty much everything else – MRAs like to pretend that the actual gender of those in power makes no difference because, well, the men in power are probably a bunch of manginas doing the dirty work of the women who really run the world. Or something like that.
Indeed, some MRAs have even managed to convince themselves that the very basic historical and sociological fact that men in power, by and large, tend to represent men’s interests more than women’s interests is some sort of locical fallacy – something that they’ve labeled “The Frontman Fallacy.”
Now A Voice for Men contributor and YouTube videoblogger TyphonBlue has done these guys one better in terms of sheer antifeminist loopiness. In the comments on one of the Warren Farrell protest videos I recently wrote about, she argues that men in power don’t really push male interests because … they probably don’t even think of themselves as men.
Here she is, writing under her other nom-de-net Genderratic:
I don’t even know what to say to this. I mean, WHAT?!
PROTIP: You’re not going to convince anyone you’re a great ally of trans* people if you refer to them as “it.”
LOL!
Are the tweets worth reading or will they just make me want to give up and start singing the rubber ducky song again?
The tweets are not worth reading.
I’m sort of enjoying her tweet screeds but I’m easily amused. I just like how she’s condemning David for all sorts of anti-transfeminity crimes, she even has receipts!, without bothering to make any reasonable, or even intelligible, points.
My favorite passive aggressive, disingenious moment:
@DavidFutrelle But you go on believing it was in bad faith. I understand the need to project from someone with Rich-quoting commenters.
She also thinks David was totes unfair to Typhonblue, of all fucking people. Tee hee.
When was the last time someone quoted Rich here? I don’t even remember that, and I’ve been here for a while.
(Not that it would be a sin anyway. I’m still not sure why Robin Morgan is supposed to be under house arrest either.)
See? FeMRA.
Keefe is the only MRA I was familiar with well before discovering David’s blog, I’ve been rolling my eyes at Keefe’s antics for years, sadly. She pulls this same shit in comment threads at The Bilerico Project and similar LBGT sites, plus her HuffPo columns are a waking nightmare full of MRA non-facts and cheap debating tricks. Watching her implode here was an early holiday treat for me.
Discovering that it was an entire movement rather than one lone crackpot can’t have been much fun, though.
Out of curiosity, how well received were her “feminists are to blame for everything” arguments received on Bilerico and so on?
I can’t figure out why seemingly all the internet FeMRAs of, er, note are Canadian. I guess hardcore antifeminists can get book deals in the US, but their Canadian counterpoints have to settle for ranting about how terrible women and/or feminists are to an online audience of asshole guys.
My theory would be, OK, let’s say you’re a screeching ragemonkey of the kind that tends to find the MRM appealing, and you live in Canada, where people are on average calm and nice and generally affable. Wouldn’t it drive you nuts? Walking around in perma-rage mode, surrounded by all these genial individuals who, when you attempt to enlist them in your vendetta of the week, shrug and say “oh well, that’s just how it is, eh”? Wouldn’t that drive you nuts?
And that’s how they end up with YouTube channels. Or at least that’s my theory.
The Bilerico stuff was years ago, but she was a pain in the ass to anyone who didn’t agree with every fucking thing she said. It’s mostly gay men so she focused on yelling at them and trans men, natch. I remember her picking a fight with an intersex activist (don’t ask) and claiming that she has little privilege as a poor transwomen “prole”, because race and education don’t seemingly factor in. As other people noticed, she seems to spend a lot of time defending cis men and denouncing cis women even while pretending to focus on trans issues. She’s delightfully a conservative with “libertarian leanings” IIRC.
And I don’t care if I remember correctly, quite honestly. I was going to google up some of her past bullshit, but I done with her, unless it’s happily picturing her raging against David and the mod “silencing” her.
And we end up with a woman lecturing her a toaster about male disposability for two hours. Your theory has merit.
At first I also found the tweets amusing (especially the ones where she try to ping David but misspells Futrelle).
But after reading some more of her tumblr posts I’m just too fed up with rampant misogyny on display.
It’s beyond me how she can consider herself some kind of a feminist but still write this:
http://valeriekeefe.tumblr.com/post/103446710586/peak-cis
It seems like a good general rule to assume that people who are feminists do not refer to women as “fuckholes”, yes.
Didn’t we just have this conversation about Christina Hoff Sommers? If you call yourself a feminist, but consistently talk and act like an anti-feminist and do your best to undermine feminism whenever you can, then you are not in fact a feminist, because words mean things.
Also, the social justice aikido via linguistic weirdness she’s attempting in the comment above? Imagine your average person who’re not familiar with any of this stuff trying to make sense of that. They’re not going to go “wow, my mind is blown”, they’re just going to frown and look confused.
patriarchal society = training wheels for lesbians facing misogyny. Okdokey.
My chosen role is not a cisheterosexual fuckhole.
Feminism, what was that about again?
Funny you should mention Christina Hoff Sommers.
VK also have a rebloged post about Sommers totally being a feminists.
So, I think it’s just another example of “words mean what I want them to mean” mindset.
I’m also curious where the farm upon which young cis lesbians are being bred is located.
More from Valerie.
I think she should go have a chat with Zoe Quinn, it might be illuminating. And also notice that the people who rushed to Quinn’s defense? Have been defending Brianna Wu too.
I hope they’re raising the young cis lesbians as free-range. Do you think they’re cornfed?
And re the bit you just quoted, so she wants to be damselled? That’s her key issue?
These chocolate covered almonds I’m eating came from Trader Joe’s, and I didn’t check the label. Shit, this probably means that I’m a non-organic bisexual, doesn’t it? At this rate they may not let me back on the farm.
You’re a purple cat, so you could be anything.
I am almost certain that the talking point of transsexualism has been fabricated by GamerGate, if that’s what you meant. It’s how they work, they just throw around accusations to soil the results of search engines. That might be very harmful, because of the transphobia rampant in society.
Their motivation is that they’re transphobic (that’s a given) and probably inspired by her acknowledgement of the plight of trans* people in the industry: http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harassment
My understanding of their evidence is limited, but I think their argument boils down to “her hands are too large for a woman” and “her face looks male”. So it’s all sexist, transphobic garbage.
It is a classic catch-22: don’t be vocal enough in rebutting the claim and it won’t be noticed, be too vocal and people will call your advocacy for trans* people hypocritical or insincere. There’s no doubt that some GamerGaters are deliberately this malicious with their tactics.