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.
Ice, chillax, it’s only when people’s problems boil down to “hot chicks won’t bang me” that we don’t want to hear about it.
Ice, I don’t know what our situation is for skilled, English-speaking immigrants (it is an absolute disgrace for refugees) but we have employers doing a constant “skilled labour shortage” lament – this after refusing to invest in training and education for decades, sheesh. At any rate, I wish you the best possible luck with coming here! At least our economy isn’t nearly as bad now as those in the EU and US, though it’s wobbling a bit. And no, you don’t sound in the least like a drama queen.
Here’s another kitty video – my Maddie having a game with Ball (with a bit of encouragement from me). Naturally, since the video was running, she didn’t make anything like the effort she would otherwise.
http://youtu.be/8b0hiO1uXFs
Oh pox, why didn’t it embed??
http://youtu.be/8b0hiO1uXFs
Huh, whoever said that I’m “white”? And for once, I actually empathize and sympathize with a poster on this board, that Croatian, “Ice”. Coming from a country who has become infamous for it’s primary export is, regrettably and tragically, of migrant labor (in fact, a good part of my job actually involves spending a great deal of time making sure our national government takes care of our Overseas Foreign Workers), I can relate with how depressing and degrading it can get to suddenly go to being a blue-collar worker abroad from being a white-collar worker back at home. BTW, certain “non-Western” women, especially Southeast Asian women, actually do really act out the stereotype with men, but only until they get a US greencard or whatever is the equivalent in the country where the men come from. After that, the disguise falls off and their true self comes out. Well, at least, that’s why the women from my country have become notorious. Tsk tsk tsk. How mercenary are females indeed!
“The arts world?”
Well, at least not the music industry, what with all the famous female musicians.
“How few women there are on our film and television screens and how frequently they are there solely as a love interest?”
And oh, if you’re complaining about lack of quantity and quality of female representation in the mass media, then make your own mass media. As overused as it is, I’ll have to use Japan as an example once again. For example, rather than whining about how females are objectified for the male audience in the manga industry male audience, they created their own half of the manga industry, where ironically, they objectified males just as much for the female audience. If you’re capable of mass producing your own sex toys after all, why not extend your self-service to other areas of life as well, eh?
Yeah, if the marginalized sections of society are upset about being marginalized, why don’t you try not being marginalized! Checkmate, feminists!
@Kitteh’s
Aww, thanks! Let’s just hope Australia doesn’t massively change all the requirements in July to the point of me being blocked again. With UK, I literally spent all my then pathetic savings to get all the paperwork, English certificates, translations of my degrees, etc etc etc, so they’d tell me, nah… we don’t want no teachers anymore.
And in exchange for kitten videos, I give you this tool. I was stupid enough to go through his blog (easy enough to find). I’m not linking ’cause he deserves no traffic. But I can always quote!
Argh. If we’re bacterial, how are we virus ridden? Also, if 40% of women are infected, how did they get that way, hmmmmm?
This guy is taking his lack of common sense and logic to extreme places.
By banging alphas, obvs. The 1.5% of men who get 1000% of the women (or whatever ridiculous statistic they invented to explain why they weren’t getting laid) are also infecting all those women with AIDS!
Of course, those sluts totally deserve to get AIDS for sleeping with men who aren’t this asshole, and he’s only mad about it because it means fewer vaginas for him.
Just for fun, I did a quick tally of Billboard’s top 50 songs.
I came up with 34 male artists and 14 female artists.
(Methodology: Duplicate artists ignored, groups counted as one, mixed-gender groups counted once in both categories.)
Notice that the top 4 artists are 2 and 2. What we see here is typical across all media: A very few women are given an especially high profile and then that’s used as proof that there is no inequity. It’s analogous to movies with a lead man and a lead woman: It looks kind of fair because the woman has one of the two most important roles; there’s a man and a woman on the poster; a man and a woman are top billed, etc. But the woman is the only female role in the film–all the supporting parts are men.
Awww. *pats Abnoy on the head*
You’re precious.
@ Molly moon- Wow, someone actually said that? God, someone got into the adult punch bowl.
American women love abortions? Well, what’s not to love? All the attention you get, death threats, legitimate fear of being a target of violence, fear of your community finding out and judging you, lose your job, loved ones disowning you- all that and someone pries open your cervix and vacuums out your uterus!! American women know how to live it up, that’s for darn sure. Ooh, that reminds me- all of you must read:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11045709-when-she-woke
This book should come with a trigger warning, btw. Also, its premise (changing skin color as a form of punishment) is kind of iffy, and I was prepared to hate it. But on the whole it was pretty good!
What’s funny is that I just spent, like, an hour on the internet following some absolutely fabulous internet-video-maker’s work. The kinda stuff that blows away everything on primetime, yanno? But it’s a woman, so obviously it’s not quite ready for primetime.
Dude. They’ve already made their own. It’s already in the house! IT’S ALREADY IN THE HOUSE!!!
@Kitteh’s unpaid help, it’s true, but given the history of the word it was never going to be a good fit for what is essentially a social justice movement.
Catholic Humanism is regarded by many as being the intellectual school which enabled the European Reformation to happen, it was the mother of Luther’s ideal of “Sola Scriptura” (basically he emphasized going back to the bible and basing Christianity on what was in it, so no Popes or Apostolic Succession or Purgatory or lot of other things held as doctrine in the catholic church). And this idea about using evidence and critical analysis of texts and being generally critical of generally held beliefs could also be seen as a forerunner of the Enlightenment. And you could view this as leading to questioning religion and eventually to atheism.
All a very simplistic way of looking at the intellectual history and development of Europe but it basically means that as a term it could never be applied to Feminism. The history of words matter.
Apologies for the potted history lesson, but it might be useful if people come up against anyone trying to use the “it should be called humanism!” line.
And thanks for your kind words Kitteh, it’s something that really makes me angry, so I’m glad I’m being angry in a way that makes sense!
@Ice, ah that’s rough. I reckon the EU is being wary of letting Croatia in because they don’t want to end up with another Greece on their hands.
Also my guess that the reason the UK is being particularly tricky is because we’ve seen so much immigration from the EU already. Everyone was rather shocked at the numbers of people who came to the UK when countries like Poland joined, particularly as the UK didn’t opt to have initial controls on numbers of people coming as a lot of other nations (like France) did. As a result we didn’t prepare our infrastructure well enough and we’ve got serious problems, particularly in areas like maternity care and we’ve pretty much run out of primary school places in London because of the increase in the birth rate.
It’s not much consolation to you I’m afraid, a lot of my family are in Greece and if Croatia’s in anything like the state that Greece is in it must be tough there. Just offering a potential explanation in apology for my country I suppose!
I think you’re a bit confused about what “mass” means.
@Historophilia – I’m with you all the way. Humanism to me brings up names like Erasmus and Thomas More, the whole intellectual world of 16th century Europe. It does not suggest atheism, and even less does it suggest a concern with women’s rights. First time I heard someone use the term in connection to atheism was back in the mid 1980s, and I was like, “Whaaat?” The guy talking had never heard of the – okay, the real Humanists – and was decrying the term because to him it meant athesim (he was a born-again). Whereas to me it was like, “Are you trying to say Thomas More et al were atheists??? C’mon, I know you don’t think Catholics are Christians but that’s just stupid!” Totally crossed wires, all because a term had been appropriated.
PS and given the rampant misogyny in the atheist movement, trying to wipe out the word “feminism” and replace it with “humanism” would not just be stupid, meaningless and wrong, it’d be downright insulting.
@Kitteh, I heard the word in that context as well, I studied the Reformation in my second to last year of school well before I knew about it’s use in Atheism.
I still think Erasmus when I hear the word though.
Oh and absolutely right about the problems in the Atheistic movement.
What is more, not all Feminists are Atheists so re-labeling ourselves Humanists would automatically alienate and exclude Feminists who do have a faith.
In addition, why is it only Feminism that apparently needs renaming? Anarchism has got a bad rep and the word has pretty much come to mean uncontrolled violence which is not what the ideology is. Yet no-one suggests that those who identify as Anarchists should rename themselves.
I have actually seen this double standard in action among my own housemates. One of them identifies as an Anarchist and while his beliefs have been challenged and discussed by the rest of us, the word itself is never challenged. Whereas when my views are discussed it’s one of the first things that come up.
I think you nailed it before, when you said that it’s the idea of a movement being about women first and foremost that raises hackles – even with people you would’nt expect it to. Goes back to the default that person = male and anything else is a variation on the norm, and not one really worthy of consideration on its own, I guess.
That’s a very good point too about feminists not automatically being atheists (which I daresay would make a few fundie Christian right wingers’ heads explode). I’d never call myself a humanist, simply because I’n not a) a sixteenth century scholar or b) an atheist.
I’d sooner be the former than the latter if it meant I could get my portrait done by Holbein the Younger, though! 😛
Yeah. Also, feminism started over basic shit like, oh, voting. Which women needed. It was about them.
And what a shock, names stick from history, even if they don’t fit perfectly forever! (See also: anarchism, US vs. Euro liberal, and PC.) The thing is, most people realize this and just sigh and deal with it, instead of kicking up a shit fit over it.
@Kitteh, I’m technically an Atheist but I was brought up Anglican which has informed my way of looking at the world and my own morals to a certain extent.
What’s more I’m very interested in religious history and have seen religion and faith do a lot of good for people that I know and care about.
I am absolutely not anti-religion, in fact I’d say I’m probably as pro-religion as you can get without actually believing in God. So being tied in with the Atheist movement would be a complete anathema for me.
For a start i’d end up in arguments with people, because every time someone pointed out all the “bad things” that religion has made happen in the world my inner Historian would be leaping forward and explaining that, for eg. the Crusades was pretty much an extended land grab by the younger sons of french nobility and that they reached the Holy Land via nicking bits of Italy and Sicily and also managed to piss off and eventually sack the greatest Christian kingdom the world has ever seen ie. Byzantium.
So a bit more complicated than “Religion did it!!!” and then they would be annoyed at me.
Plus I really dislike Richard Dawkins. He is a smug, intolerant old git who is not that much of a scientist and needs taking down several pegs.
I’m bored, and unable to resist bad math, so here’s wtf I worked out for the actual percentage of US women living with HIV or AIDS (this is complex enough, I’m not figuring it out based on that).
First, the percentage of HIV/AIDS cases that are women, and thank you CDC! “In 2008, an estimated 25% of adults and adolescents living with HIV infection were female” (source)
Second, what’s the percentage of HIV/AIDS cases in the population? In raw numbers — “CDC estimates that 1,148,200 persons aged 13 years and older are living with HIV infection, including 207,600 (18.1%) who are unaware of their infection” (source). Since the population of the US is 315,005,000 (source), that works out to, um, let’s round up to 0.4%
25% of 0.4% is a tiny number, 0.1% — One tenth of a percent of US women have HIV/AIDS, not the 40-fucking-percent that idiot wanted to claim. Math, they all really suck at it (did they just like, decide that since “men are inherently better at math” they didn’t need to bother learning math?!)
That’s ignoring race btw, and I’d be remiss not to note the disparity there — “Black and Latina women are disproportionately affected at all stages of HIV infection compared with women of other races/ethnicities.” (source)
This has been your morning (or whatever time it is where you are) math lesson 🙂
I have very little to say that’s on topic, but I do want to second this — “Plus I really dislike Richard Dawkins. He is a smug, intolerant old git who is not that much of a scientist and needs taking down several pegs.”
Idk how many of you saw David’s tweet about Dawkins the other day, but I emailed someone the original Dawkins stupidity, so here’s the stupid that David was tweeting about — pic of Dawkins original tweet and the link he references.
Trigger warning on both: rape, incest, molestation, child abuse (mental and physical), religious abuse, general lack of humanity (eg comparing the above) — serious lack of humanity (and humility, though that should come as no surprise)
Hurrah for real facts and numbers!