There’s one kind of person you meet again and again in the manosphere: the man who hates women, but insists that he’s not a misogynist. Some of them will even tell you that you calling them a misogynist is equivalent to a white person calling a black person the n-word. And they seem to even believe this.
You may find yourself wondering: how is it that a person who clearly hates women, who says hateful things about them constantly, who spends all his time reading blogs and message boards devoted to the notion that women are evil bitches — how is it that such a person can come to believe that they aren’t a woman-hater?
Well, you’re in luck, because not that long ago one of these fellows gave us a glimpse into the mysterious inner workings of the mind of the misogynist who thinks he’s not a misogynist.
In a post on the Men’s Rights subreddit he titled “Next time someone calls you a misogynist,” cabin5 unpacked all his weird rationalizations and laid them out for everyone to see.
This is long, but worth reading. It’s very revealing. And also sort of hilarious, both in its total lack of awareness and in its garden-variety ignorance and stupidity.
Uh, dude, one part of the definition of “hatred” is “extreme aversion.” Which is also one definition of, you guessed it, repulsion. If you’re repulsedby women — or at least by “the modern, confrontational, American toxic female” — it’s safe to say that yes, indeed, you hate women, or at least the vast majority of the women that you meet on an everyday basis here in the US. Also, if you post in the Men’s Rights subreddit, and regularly use phrases like “the modern, confrontational, American toxic female,” it’s pretty much like having the words “I hate women” tattooed on your forehead.
Elsewhere in the thread he offers further insights into these terrible American “females.”
Western women tend to be butch & mannish- you would have to be practically homosexual to be attracted to one. I’m not homosexual. And they’re like crappy zerox copies of men without any of the positive qualities. …
Possibly the most repulsive things would be their complete unaccountability & the fact that on average, they’re venerally diseased whores who’ve had 57 cocks in them by the age of 25. Would you want your child coming out of that vagina? It’s nauseating.
Dude, I don’t want your child coming out of any vagina. Also, it’s “xerox.”
These are all the thoughts of a grown ass man — who claims to have a daughter over the age of 18 — who honestly thinks he’s somehow not a misogynist.
Happy holidays Freitag (maybe you’ll get lucky and have a TARDIS crash the holiday “fun” 🙂 )
@Dee
I think they sometimes point out things that are real problems, but since they have no understanding of the cause of those problems (Hint: not ARGLE BARGLE ANDREA DWORKIN AND SHARON OSBORNE ARE COMING FOR OUR PENISES!!!) they will never ever solve them. And mostly, by taking men who are hurt and bitter and giving them a place to stew in their hurt and bitterness and anger, they make the world a worse place for everyone — including other MRAs — to live in.
And on that happy note….
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!!! I can’t top freitag’s video extravaganza and won’t even try. That was a glorious thing.
Freitag, enjoy your tort… uh, holiday! Happy Holidays, everyone! Even our miserable little trolls.
Dee, the purpose of the blog is mock misogyny. Glad I could clear that up. Why would I WANT to agree with people who think women aren’t fully human?
FTFY, and yes, misogynists are always wrong about their misogyny…should we ever get one saying something like “so, isn’t this cat cute?” we’d probably agree in a heartbeat. But no, we get ones saying that any cat that scratches should be put down. (Gods, I almost miss DKM, he was at least consistent, and capable of forming arguments…terrible arguments, but arguments all the same.)
Dee, you say you’ve been reading the posts. Do you actually read David’s articles and the things he quotes from MRM sites? They’re full of rage and hate against women, they deny rape exists, they say women have no right to work, or the vote, or to any control over our lives and our bodies.
Why on earth do you think any decent human being would agree with them?
Seriously, there is a name for people who are genuinely concerned about how sexism, confining gender roles and patriarchy harm men and women. It’s called “feminist”.
Have I recently mentioned how much I love Monty Python?
I find it disturbing when I read about someone’s hatred of “American Women” because usually this is their ugly way of saying racist, sexist entitled asshole things:
When someone says “American Woman” in this context, their actual intended meaning is:
* Educated (ie: more educated than he is)
* White (or by contrast, black but only if it plays into some racist “loud black woman” stereotype)
* Disagrees with him about anything
* Has Self-Esteem and doesn’t take bullshit from assholes
* A Lesbian, but In A Bad Way (ie: Not for his pleasure and entertainment), see also, usage of “lesbian” as an insult to a straight woman because her behavior displeases him
* Woman Trying to Be A Man (as though being intelligent or having opinions or political thoughts are gendered and “belong” to men so women merely imitate them badly).
* Is basically a person and expects to be treated like a person instead of a pet or a sex toy (which is apparently a bad thing to these dudes).
When I see people acting like this, it makes me want to reply, “Not exactly a good argument in favor of anyone with any other options actually choosing you.
Reminds me of that old Aesop’s fable about the Fox and the Grapes:
One afternoon a fox was walking through the forest and spotted a bunch of grapes hanging from over a lofty branch.
“Just the thing to quench my thirst,” quoth he.
Taking a few steps back, the fox jumped and just missed the hanging grapes. Again the fox took a few paces back and tried to reach them but still failed.
Finally, giving up, the fox turned up his nose and said, “They’re probably sour anyway,” and proceeded to walk away.
It’s easy to despise what you cannot have.
http://www.umass.edu/aesop/content.php?n=10&i=1
Yeah, holding up the-lady-known-as-Murasaki (not her real name since women’s names didn’t often get recorded) as an example of anything is … not really going to prove anything about Japanese society at the time. She was unusual (although there was also Sei Shonagon, whom MS hated but I thought was more fun to read) in that she had a “boy’s” education. Not as unusual as someone who was literate or a writer, since most court ladies had to be literate and be able to write, since most communication was through love poems at that time. (Men and women couldn’t court face-to-face and had to talk through screens and poems. There was even a time when some women wrote poems professionally for men who hired them.) But she was still kind of unusual. Especially since a couple of her works survived! A lot of literature of the time was lost, as you might imagine.
And … to continue beating this horse, Genji was viewed as trash. Kind of like romance novels today. It was really popular with women and girls (why I have no idea because it’s boring as soot) and men tended to poo-poo that sort of thing as not serious MANLEE literature (even though some enjoyed it in secret). Which I guess meant court documents or something. Because that was manly. (Aside note: There were men who wrote AS women because men were only supposed to write serious, official diaries and women could elaborate on how they felt and so on.)
Oh, and MS was damned to hell or something. Because Genji was so trashy. I forget who. And then there was someone defending MS and … I only take these classes because they make me, so I don’t quite remember.
However, once Japan closed itself off from the world (and men and women no longer spoke through screens) they did enjoy a very high literacy rate among the population. Even though it was still a shitty place for women. And is still in many ways a shitty place for women.
/end (no, it’s good for me to rant about this stuff because I remember it)
Hah, feminists don’t really want equality, they secretly want a matriarchy where males are neutered, just like the Aes Sedai in the WOT. It is in the very name “Fem”. Genuine inclusivity would be called “humanism” and would not try to turn males into females with penises.
Oh for the umpteenth time, humanism has some very serious issues with inclusivity. They get all “after the singularity/revolution” about shit. Eg, non-binary gender? Well gender is just a construction, including binary genders, so we’re really all the same! When, um no, binary people have way less BS to put up with.
…and I have a cat attacking my door, in hopes that if she hits it hard enough it’ll open (well it worked last time! ‘cept my door wasn’t latched then, silly kitteh!)
As for the rest of that hot mess, no, no one (except maybe some really out there radfems) want men to be neutered…unless you mean male cats/dogs/other neuterable furry animals. Second, by all that is holy, would you please stop making comparisons to fictional worlds and claiming they prove reality?
And do y’all think you and the rest of the MRM could get together and decide if feminism is turning women into men, or “males into females with penises”? (Pretty sure the plural of penis is penii…did we ever reach a consensus on that? Pecunium, some Latin help here?)
And, even more importantly, the Aes Sedai don’t actually neuter anybody.
They just cut off their supply of magic. Because the male source was tainted, filled with evil directly by Satan. It was a work of mercy!
…and it wasn’t as permanent as they had hoped.
…and the male source was cleansed.
…and I’m a nerd.
“…and I’m a nerd.”
And I praise you for having some clue wtf ABNOY was talking about.
I’ve been reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series since 1991. The final chapter, written by Brandon Sanderson from the late RJ’s notes, will be arriving at my house when it’s finally released.
I weep for the hours wasted, the brainpower spent. BUT I MUST KNOW HOW IT ENDS THE DRAGON REBORN WILL SHED HIS BLOOD OMG OMG OMG
I find the comments about “Eastern European and South American women” offensive as there also seems to be this notion that such women (and presumably, men from the same parts of the world) are less well-educated, more compliant and easier to control- in other words, a bit backward. I’m British and in reality it seems that a lot of Eastern European migrant workers here in the UK are more skilled and better-educated than a lot of UK-born workers- and they often speak better English! Here are some recent stats:
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21568746-foreign-born-are-more-successful-britain-most-places-better-billed
From personal experience: I work in science and work with two Eastern Europeans. One is an admittedly rather sexist man, but the other is a woman who doesn’t take any crap from him. Both are also PhD students and therefore very well-educated and speakers of fluent English- not to mention excellent scientists. Through my work I’ve met plenty of other bright and talented scientists from Eastern Europe, South America and South East Asia- and none of the female ones are what an MRA would have in mind as his Dream Compliant Non-Western Female. These places outside the Anglosphere seem to be doing just fine- as opposed to being havens where uneducated women grow on trees.
I’m Welsh myself and have lost count of the times someone has assumed I must have grown up on a farm, in a little village with no electricity, no television and no phones- and this is just coming from English people! I suppose I can relate to some extent- “backward” is a word I’ve often heard used to describe the Welsh.
To me the “non-Western female” seems to be based on an offensive stereotype- and nothing more than a stereotype as women like this simply don’t exist, along with all those non-educated “HB10s” and virgins who are somehow still really good at sex. Maybe they only exist in porn films- and I often get the impression that an MRA’s knowledge of sex is based entirely on what they’ve seen in porn.
On a lighter note, it all reminds me of the British sitcom I’m Alan Partridge, and in particular series 2 in which the titular character gets a Ukrainian girlfriend called Sonja. He describes her as “mildly cretinous” and often takes advantage of the fact that she can’t speak good English. These things seem to be part of her appeal to him, but naturally there are many occasions where she outwits him and we discover she’s not as “cretinous” as he assumed.
Alan Partridge isn’t an MRA but he *is* thoroughly obnoxious- check this out:
What is more, the word “Humanism” is more closely associated with Atheism and those who campaign for lessening the influence of religion in public life. At least in the UK usually. For example, when the pope visited the UK recently some organisations paid to put up anti-religious posters on bill boards along the routes he took and in the news they were described as “Humanist” groups.
And if you’re a historian “Humanism” also means the intellectual movement that developed pre the European Reformation which encouraged going back to the text of the bible and the gospels in their original language (ie. Hebrew and Greek) because the Latin version had become so corrupted in order to fully understand what it meant. It was also a more general intellectual trend which was partially spurred into life by the arrival in Latinate Europe of Ancient Greek texts after the fall of Constantinople and the re-introduction of the Greek philosophers and thinkers.
So using “Humanism” instead of Feminism would be a terrible idea, as I point out to people who try to make this argument. Because the word is already solidly associated with other things.
The other point I make to those who try and argue that Feminism is an alienating word is that the only reason they think that is because they are so un-used to anything in society being focused on women and not in some way being ultimately concerned with what men want.
I tell them that if they feel alienated by a word that is un-ashamedly female-centric then how do they think women might feel about how male-centric so much language is? (ie. ChairMAN, how the automatic pronoun used for something you don’t know the sex of is “he”, particularly in english where words don’t have gender) How we might feel alienated by how male our politics is? The business world is? The arts world? How few women there are on our film and television screens and how frequently they are there solely as a love interest?
So basically, no we are not going to change the name of our movement/ideology/beliefs simply because you are so deep in your privilege that a mere word alarms you and when it is exactly what the patriarchy would want us to do.
I am proud to call myself a Feminist and while I welcome all to the movement who are men or non-binary or trans or who otherwise do not identify as women or as female, I am not ashamed that it is a movement founded by women for women to address the issues women face.
These days things are more complicated and it is quite right that we work for the rights of those who are also affected by patriarchy, particularly trans people and the otherwise non-binary.
However I am loathe to ignore the history of the movement and I absolutely refuse to do so in order to soothe the offended privilege of a middle-class white bloke. I’m sorry but your hurt feelings are the least of my problems.
Rant/
@Stepford Knife
Definitely with you on Eastern Europeans often speaking better english than many British born people.
There’s a Lithuanian guy in my university accommodation and we’ve joked about this with him before. His standard of english, his vocabulary, his grammar and the complexity of his language is far, far higher than you hear from the average teenager. Also his accent is much more understandable than many!
Sorry I am late to the fish discussion. I’m glad others here have awesome fish friends! I have 3 danios and 2 dojo loaches who keep me company. I feel bad for them right now as I am staying with family over my holidays and have left them at home with a 2 week food tablet (which I don’t think they like much and the loaches basically just shove it all around the tank). I have a friend who goes over to see them every few days and gives them some real food and freeze dried blood worms. Whenever I mention I worry about my fish when I am away people give me odd looks, like I can see them thinking “why are you worried about stupid fish, they are practically just plants?” Those people have clearly never owned fish… Hell, or plants for that matter!
“Those people have clearly never owned fish… Hell, or plants for that matter!”
Lol, agreed, on all counts. I could probably leave my fish unsupervised a few days longer than my plants, but I’ve got an orchid and African violent, picky little things they are!
I hear good things about dojo loaches, but I’m a clown loach fan myself (and the littlest one is investigating a patch of hair algae, D’AWWW)
As long as you have someone dropping in to give them real food, they should be fine. I get neurotic about leaving my loaches alone for more than a few days too. Only fish I’ve had that liked those tablets is plec, and he’ll eat anything (except, apparently, hair algae *sigh*)
As an Eastern European woman with a failed attempt to migrate to UK (the requirements post 2010 were flat out ridiculous, and then when I finally managed to get all the required documentation, they essentially sent me away with “Sorry, we changed the requirements 2 months ago. But good luck in trying again!”), thank you for this. The amount of hate I keep on hearing about Eastern European migrants is flat out disgusting. Considering we pretty much need a masters degree minimum (and being told by UK NARIC that my masters degree is the same like UK bachelors degree, because UK high schools are just so much better than Croatian ones, and logically it takes UK students only 3 years for what took me 5… now that was just precious), loads of cash which is essentially incredibly hard to save, while being given a smaller salary than my UK counterpart, having to listen to the rage fits about how immigrants have it SO MUCH BETTER! Because, you know, your country getting a free extremely well qualified worker who’s desperate enough to accept a lower salary for a job that’s just far too unglamorous for you to even consider… yeah. It’s me who’s the problem.
Sorry for oversharing. For some reason, this had to get out.
@Ice
:-/ That sounds sucky. I’m sorry.
Have a bunny taking a shower:
Awww, crap. Regret I’m on limited internet traffic, but will definitely go back to that this weekend! Thanks! :3
(It’s scary how much I’ve learned to use Manboobz comments as an instant stress relief. The furry oversharing, eee! :D)
No apologies necessary, Ice, thanks for sharing!
@Ice, which country in Eastern Europe are you from? I’m assuming a non-EU one otherwise you could just move here without having to jump through so many hoops.
Historophilia, seconding your comments about why humanism is not the right word at all. I admit to being somewhat pissed off on occasion that it’s been nabbed by the atheist movement. And your points about why some people get so hostile to the very idea of a movement that is chiefly concerned about women are excellent.
@Historophilia
Croatia. And yep, pretty much that. Even though we’re (hopefully! *crossing everything*) ascending on the 1 July, so many countries have blocked us (I don’t know the English name for that… essentially, used up their right to keep us away from being treated as full members), UK taking the maximum of 7 years, lovely as they are.
And then the economic situation in Croatia is so bad that I’m pretty much at the end of my wits as to what to do (and it’s getting worse, oh god is it getting worse). My current attempt is Australia. Let’s hope they don’t get super nationalistic and xenophobic like most of EU has in the last 5 years.
(The reason why I don’t really comment much here is that I’m afraid I’ll end up sounding like a huge drama queen — like right now, I’m sorry! — or seem to be the one derailing threads to all her problems, because essentially when I read your financial problems, my thoughts gravitate towards “waaaaants precious!” *jealous* So I keep my mouth shut and read you awesome people. Again, thanks for the kitten videos! :P)