Well, now you’ve gone and done it, you evil feminists: you’ve turned 0bvious_Atheist into a Nazi!
We first met the Men’s Rights subreddit regular the other day, when in a fit of ingenuity he blamed the Newtown school shootings on, er, Title IX. Well, his strange political journey has continued, and on his blog, on Boxing Day, the Canadian MRA officially announced his conversion to neo-Nazism. Literally. Let’s let him explain:
I have grown impatient
I have lost my desire for conventional activism. We live in an era where men like Warren Farrell are run off campus by mobs of Femistasi, men like Keenan Midgley get maligned for trying to start Men’s Centres, JohnTheOther gets harassed in the streets and others like him get assaulted, Mr. Heimbach a white students advocate in the United States, is constantly maligned by the media and the intellectual establishment, and Jared Taylor, a meek and mild Yale graduate, is harassed at every turn by the establishment.
Huh. I have to admit I’m not completely up-to-date on all the examples of anti-white, anti-male oppression he lists here, but I would like to point out that Warren Farrell did not, in fact, get run off the University of Toronto campus. A number of students protested his visit, some of them quite rudely, but the police interceded on his behalf, clearing away protesters so he could go ahead and make his speech.
I also looked up that vague reference to “Mr. Heinbach,” and discovered that Matthew Heimbach is a student at Maryland’s Towson University who wants to start a White Student Union there. As part of his campaign for tolerance on behalf of America’s beleaguered white majority, he recently posed in front of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church in Montgomery holding a Confederate flag.
Gosh, how terribly unfair it is that some people might have criticized him for this.
Mr. Atheist continues:
I’m a young man. I don’t have the patience to go around asking for permission to exercise my inalienable, natural right to freedom of association. As Harold Covington said, Whites feel they need a permission slip from quote “the Jews” unquote to advocate for them. I feel the same thing can be said of Men’s Rights Activism. We feel that we need permission from Feminists, the intellectual establishment, and the state to self-advocate. Our entire movement has become a quest for permission from the left to self-advocate.
I’m pretty sure that not even a single molecule of that is even remotely true. What color is the sky in Imaginary Backwards Land?
We want a Men’s Ministry in the government. We want Men’s organizations on campus. We want White student unions. All of those things are politically toxic to the establishment and out of reach, and furthermore, if you look at what the “Men’s Ministries” in the Northern European welfare states have done you will remain unimpressed, and perhaps even alarmed, at how little they have mitigated the total alienation of young men from the respective societies of those countries.
Of course, the young men who are most alienated from society in the Northern (and Southern) European welfare states today are the immigrants who are so despised by Mr. Atheist and his fellow White “Nationalist” racist assholes. And these young male immigrants aren’t feeling alienated because of a lack of White Student Unions or the unimpressive actions of Men’s Ministries; they’re feeling alienated because of racism and a lack of jobs.
With this in mind we must recognize that productive organizations simply are not going to become a reality. If you doubt me, you can go look at what they did to Dr Warren Farrell when he tried to speak at the University of Toronto. I have absolutely no desire to be screamed at, spit on, expelled, fired, ostracized, and made into a pariah for simply asking to exercise my right to freedom of association.
So the fact that a couple of dozen students protested against a speaker on a college campus, delaying his talk for half an hour or so, means that normal political activity on behalf of your ass-backwards faux “civil rights movement” is impossible? Mr. Atheist, do you have any fucking idea what real civil rights advocates went through in order to get the same basic rights as everyone else, like the right to fucking vote? Do you think that feminists weren’t ever “screamed at, spit on, expelled, fired, ostracized, and made into … pariah(s)?”
What sort of strange entitled bubble do you live in that you think political activism should be painless? Or that your political opponents should simply roll over once you express your opinions?
Congratulations intellectual establishment. After around 14 years of politically correct education at politically correct institutions run by politically correct professors you have alienated me, first as a White, and secondly as a male. I have got absolutely no patience for your goddamn processes, your forms, your organizational quotas and quorums required to get approval from the UVSS. I’m fed up, and I’m going elsewhere else to self-advocate.
If you’re really serious about going “elsewhere else,” might I suggest another planet?
As market Anarchists and Libertarians constantly must remind you crypto-Marxists, if you ban something the buyer will go elsewhere in the market to get it. That’s exactly what I plan to do. Rather than grovelling at the feet of professors, academics, pseudo-intellectual social justice warriors, and Femistasi, I’m just going to go join the Western Front, a quasi-Neo-Nazi, semi-illegal White Nationalist political organization that accepts me for what I am and understands my problems. You have driven a relatively well off, intelligent, middle class, White male, who used to vote NDP, into the arms of the very people you taught me to despise for the totality of my formative years.
Great. I guess the one upside of all this is that Mr. Atheist won’t be calling feminists “feminazis” from now on. Not that “femistasi” is much of an improvement.
Oh, and in case anyone needs visual evidence of how much of a racist fuck 0bvious_Atheist really is — not that there’s much doubt — here’s a link to a cartoon he stuck onto the end of one of his recent YouTube videos. But first, a TRIGGER WARNING for really really racist rape imagery. Link.
(Note: There doesn’t seem to be any information online about a neo-Nazi group called Western Front, at least not in Canada. There was evidently one by that name in Los Angeles at one point. Does this group, like the anti-white-male oppression he talks about, exist only in 0bvious_Atheist’s head? EDITED TO ADD: There is a group called Northwest Front; presumably that’s what he meant.)
Celebrities as disparate as Bill Cosby and Mr. T had majority overlap in their fan bases, as did characters as contrasting as Jean-Luc Picard and The Macho Man Randy Savage. At this point, you might be feeling a deep inner emptiness lamenting a bygone age
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
OH GOD I’M DYING
Hey now I do miss Picard!
You *said* you retracted it, but nothing you have said since then gave any indication that you actually understood the point. You keep doubling down as if that is going to help anything.
Maybe it’s because I’m a copy-editor, but I like to think Macho Man Randy Savage would have body-slammed the writer through the floor for incorrectly using the definite article with his name.
David, you have to do a post on The Misandry Bubble. It’s the greatest – i.e., most hilarious – piece of MRA writing ever.
Second dream job, after published author. 😀
But it’s so LONG. I tried to read it and gave up because my eyes were losing focus, presumably as a result of my subconscious trying to protect me from the epic dumbassery.
So I was under the impression that the kind of MRA misogyny documented on this blog was only really happening in the dirty corners of the internet. But I went to a NYE party tonight, invited by (someone I thought was) a friend, and he and his friend were hitting loads of MRA talking points even. I am pretty sure they don’t read any websites about it, but some of it was so dead on what MRAs say. At first I was able to do a bit of light-hearted mockery, but then a 3rd guy started being a racist arsehat as well (while denying being at all racist of course) and I couldn’t take it anymore. This (and no patience for woo) is why I don’t get invited to parties.
So yeah, I just wanted to share my bubble bursting with you all. I have always felt very welcome in this commentariat and I wish my NYE party had been with you guys instead.
CassandraSays: as the author points out, you have to read it slowly, in instalments – otherwise you die from lulz.
CWS: well, I spend a lot of time moaning about how standards have plummeted and most writers and editors these days can’t string a basic sentence together, but yeah, it’s pretty good. I’m a freelance and work from home about 90% of the time, which is definitely my favourite aspect of the job.
I haven’t seen Fight Club since it came out, but I don’t recall Tyler Durden being a violent misogynist.
Francis Begbie, on the other hand, most definitely is – I don’t have my copy of Trainspotting immediately to hand, and so will spare you from quoting from its first-person account of Begbie kicking the shit out of his pregnant girlfriend over some trivial complaint, but suffice it to say that anyone who adopts that pseudonym is unlikely to be visiting an anti-misogyny blog in entirely good faith.
I skimmed The Misandry Bubble last night for awhile and I couldn’t even laugh that much at it. All I could think is how anyone could be THAT delusional. I mean there any many times where it contradicts itself, even in adjacent paragraphs. But yes, I’ll echo and ask David to do a post about it. Mostly so it can shredded by everyone here.
Also a lot of people here are really good writers. I am not. Math-y things come easy to me but even at 28 years I still manage to sometimes mess up on basic grammar and spelling. I guess we all have our strengths weaknesses. 🙁
Wetherby: Durden was a misogynist (there’s a passage in FC where the narrator talks about mothers and women, and it’s like fuck you, dude), but not to the level of Begbie. I was just mocking the use of names from so-called “edgy” works of fiction. MRAs eat that shit up.
Omega Woman and Brooklyn G, welcome.
Brooklyn, I’d search the blog for some of our trolls, it’ll give you some background. Very few of them shot out of the gate like Melissa.
I give the side-eye to those who want to be educated here. It’s not that kind of venue, and most please for education we get aren’t exactly sincere.
“Please” should be pleas. Words, how the fuck do they work?
Bad_dog, I was talking about my work, not here. In fact most of the posters here are better writers than the majority of the professional ‘journalists’ that I’ve worked with over the years – but then, that may be because the posters here don’t have the crutch of a copy-editor (ie. muggins here) to fall back on, so they actually read the posts back to themselves to check for errors rather than fucking off to the pub at half past four.
Me, bitter? Go on then; I’ll have a pint.
@Melissa: I think a part of you may be sincere, so I will try to explain in good faith what I think is so offensive about the kinds of “suggestions” that you give to women for avoiding rape and/or abuse.
When you tell women they better not go out at night without an escort because rapists might be lurking, the most offensive thing here, as far as I see it, is that you apparently presume that women are small children, who lead incredibly sheltered lives and/or possess the mental faculties of toddlers. Which is why women apparently need people (benevolent men and, in all fairness, other women) explain to them, in three paragraphs or so, that the world is a dangerous place, and being out at night can get you raped or killed.
Newsflash: I live in the real world, too. I know being out at night increases my chances of getting raped. So do lots of other things. Leaving the house increases my chances of rape. Living in a densely populated urban area increases my chances of rape. Being dressed in normal clothes, and not like a refrigerator, increases my chances of rape. Being young increases my chances of rape. Dating increases my chances of rape. Drinking in any amount increases my chances of rape. Allowing any kind of interaction with any man whatsoever increases my chances of rape. Going to school increases my chances of rape. Having a job in a male-dominated field increases my chances of rape. Travel increases my chances of rape. Living on the first floor increases my chances of rape. Living in a building without a doorman increases my chances of rape. Using public transportation increases my chances of rape. I could go on, but this post would end up being a mile long.
The fact that most women choose to get out there and not just cower inside a closet wearing a burqua and a cast-iron chastity belt (probably a good way to avoid rape) isn’t to be interpreted as “accepting the risk” of rape. We do these things, all of us — you included, no doubt — because just like men, we want a life where risk avoidance is balanced against having fun and meaningful, fulfilling experiences that make life worth living in the first place. And the last thing we need is having some asswipe lecture us that merely by having the temerity to live, we are being imprudent, foolish and inviting abuse, possibly death to ourselves; that the only way for such abuse to stop is for us to retreat from life, go behind closed doors, and circumscribe our existence.
Your argument that rapists are deaf to advice or admonishment is likewise without merit. I don’t want to go dig up the links right now, because it has been discussed to death on this site before you showed up, but there is a surprisingly great number of men — still a small minority of men, but not an insignificant one — who will admit to having raped repeatedly as long as you don’t call it “rape”. Rapists have a vested interest in narrowing the definition of rape — or “legitimate rape”, in Akin-speak — so they can rape with impunity. You are right that rapists like to rape; what you don’t seem to be getting is that rapists don’t like to be called “rapists”, so they go to great lengths to dissociate themselves from the label in order to have more freedom to rape. One way to do so is to put the onus for avoiding rape entirely on the victim. That’s why rape apologists argue foaming-at-the-mouth that if the victim was drunk and can’t remember, then it isn’t really rape, just “regrets”; that men are simple creatures endowed with disproportionate physical strength, who cannot understand non-verbal clues, or verbal clues, or anything; that a man, once aroused, is physically incapable of refraining from going through with intercourse; and that the majority of rapes are merely a result of some inadvertent misunderstanding. Rape apologists avoid actually using the words “it was her fault”, but notice how in all of these arguments, the blame is shifted to the victim: rape just “happened” because the victim chose to drink, because she didn’t find a way to communicate her non-consent more effectively than by saying the entirely vague “no”, because she looked alluring to the rapist, because she happened to come across his path. So we have a good reason to place the onus on preventing rapes on rapists themselves — by, first and foremost, taking away their psychological comfort and the social support that exists for at least certain kinds of perpetrators.
Finally, “advice” such as the one you offer illustrates that the threat of rape — just the threat — is an enduring form of social control over women. Don’t wanna get raped? Fine: don’t leave the house, stay under constant supervision of a male guardian, don’t go to school, don’t pursue a career, don’t attract men with your looks, don’t date, don’t go to parties, in other words don’t live as freely or enjoyably as men do. But rapists — they don’t have to limit their lives in any way, shape or form, because as reasonable people, we should just resign ourselves to the fact that they do what they want. Do you not see how this is a horribly unfair, sexist argument? The view that it is women, not men, who should limit their lives in significant ways in order to make rape not happen?
Melissa
When I was a teenager, my best friend was brutally raped by a stranger. My first impulse was to be angry with her for getting in the car with a strange guy who offered her a joint. How stupid could you be, I thought. I held onto that for years. This is internalized misogyny. I’m so glad I had the decency to never tell her I blamed her for getting in that car. Years later I figured out how wrong that was of me.
It’s very hard to see misogyny when it’s so ingrained. From a very young age women are taught to “protect themselves” by following certain rules to keep your vulnerability down. Don’t walk at night, don’t leave your drink unattended, etc. of course everyone should take precautions – the world is full of psychos. That’s why you shouldn’t hitchhike, etc. but this advice leads dangerously to victim blaming. If someone hurts you, the blame is on the perpetrator. Otherwise where does this list of precautions end?
But indeed, my laughter soon turned to queasy tedium as I read through The Misandry Bubble. Although it could serve a purpose as a primer to teach people about internet misogyny, as it’s basically a laundry list of every bullshit MRA/PUA/evo-psych talking point out there.
Okay, I haven’t read about half of this blog, but I just wanted to say: I love The Omega Woman’s icon!
about half of this *thread
You know… I’ve been wondering…
All these tips to “avoid being raped” definitely almost completely blame teh victim, there’s no doubt about that.
But I wonder if they originate from a more depressing place: cynicism. Could it not so much be intended as victim-blaming as it is a sort of giving up on human nature? Sort of like “people are going to rape. I don’t have enough faith in humanity to expect these to not rape. So better to protect myself than have any faith in people to respect my boundaries destroyed.”…?
Perhaps that’s the origin? Cynicism?
I ask because I had this discussion on Facebook last night (well… about 2 this morning [Eastern Standard Time]) with an old friend. She said that she follows all those steps to protect herself from rape not because she thinks it’d be her fault if she got raped (she’s not one for victim-blaming having experienced it herself), but because she doesn’t have enough faith in humanity to expect anyone to listen to the phrase “don’t rape”. She says that such an idea is a nice wish, but it ignores what she says is the reality of human nature.
She used murder as an example. With exceptions (war and self defense), we already teach our kids not to kill others, and yet we still have serial killers and other kinds of murderers. My friend doesn’t expect any better as far as rape is concerned.
To quote her directly:
“Rapists are going to rape. I’d rather protect myself than expect people to be decent when, quite frankly, they most likely aren’t going to be.”
Granted, she is one of the most misanthropic people I’ve ever known; her general hatred of humanity was infamous at our old high school. She’s the one who introduced me to Bill Hicks (who, I have to admit, taught me skepticism) so that’s probably just her.
However, I could see that kind of cynicism/misanthropy being the origins of the whole “how to protect yourself from rape” thing as opposed to any kind of victim-blaming.
Again, that’s not to say it’s not victim-blaming; it very obviously is. But being a cynic myself, I can understand not having enough faith in humanity to actually learn from “don’t rape”. Hell… especially after what happened in India, I don’t have enough faith in humanity to think something like that would work. After Savita, and now this, I’m very quickly heading back to “we’re a virus in shoes” and “we’re going to tear ourselves apart; let it happen.”
Last night, I watched Bill Hicks’s most infamous show again. It’s the one where he’s being heckled really bad, and he eventually loses it and shouts out “Hitler had the right idea! He was just an underachiever!” Of course, what Bill was suggesting was quite a bit bigger than the implication there, as Bill was screaming out that the whole of humanity should be wiped out.
I can’t agree with that idea anymore, but I can relate to it as I used to believe it myself not much more than a few years ago.
It’s hard to think that there’s any goodness when shit gets so dark; so I can understand why someone might not think that teaching kids to “not rape” would only work as well as teaching them to “not kill” has worked.
No. Those helpful hints have been around for millenia in one form or another.
Don’t be cynical. That way lies libertarianism. I’m only half-joking about that.
Also, thinking the way your friend does lets people off the hook for their actions and gives them license to operate. Just shrugging and saying “rapists gonna rape, oh well” is even more depressing than fighting.
On the one hand, I don’t think the intention of the tips matter. What matters is that (1) the tips are victim-blaming and (2) the tips are pretty much useless. You’re most likely to be sexually assaulted in someone’s house (possibly your own), by an acquaintance, friend, or family member. Whether or not you have your hair in a ponytail or are wearing a purse with a shoulder strap in a dimly lit parking lot is less of a concern.
It also occurs to me that if one were really — actually — cynical, one wouldn’t expect women to follow one’s stupid fucking list of rape prevention tips.
hellkell…
I think you have the tone of “rapists gonna rape, oh well” wrong. It’s not so much giving them license as it is giving up.
“They don’t listen. They don’t ever listen. I don’t know how to make them listen. So why bother trying, if trying is just going to end in failure?”
Oh… and I know that path leads to Libertarianism. I am a Libertarian, just not any kind of Libertarian the US would recognize, as I’m a Socialist Libertarian. That is, I’m Libertarian insofar as I think drugs should be, at worst decriminalized, at best legalized, I think prostitution should be legalized, I’m pro-choice, I think homosexuals should be able to get married, etc. I’m a Socialist insofar as I think do not believe in an unregulated market (on the contrary… the more regulation the better, especially when it comes to drugs and prostitution), and I support Welfare programs and Affirmative Action initiatives and stuff like that.
I used to be an Ayn Rand Libertarian, but I’m much more educated about the real world now.
So yeah… I’m fully aware of that. It’s where I was, once.
Bee…
She follows it herself because of her cynicism, but she doesn’t bring it up with others, either. She’s had experience with victimization (I won’t say more than that… it’s not my place), and she’s not one for putting that on others who’ve been through it. She uses that excuse to justify her personal decision to follow those and other “safety tips”. She’s the one who taught me to abhor proselytizing, and she would view victim-blaming and such on the same level. It’s just how she justifies to herself, not to others.
“Those helpful hints have been around for millenia in one form or another.”
I guess most people who are repeationg this are mindlessly repeating “conventional wisdom” and might even think it’s helpful. The tips are victim-blaming, but it’s not immediately obvious, it might take an extra layer of thinking to see that.