Today is an auspicious day. For the Men’s Rights Subreddit, which we often write about here on Man Boobz, has won the prestigious World’s Greatest Shitlord Award. Oh, sorry, I mean it won the Subreddit of the Day award on Reddit. Which is, in this case, pretty much the same thing.
Here are some highlights from the official announcement , which I am totally not making up. No, really, you can go look. Someone – that being XavierMendel, one of the mods of r/subredditoftheday — actually wrote these things. And meant them. I AM NOT BEING SARCASTIC THIS IS REAL HOLY SHIT.
The topic at hand today takes a generous turn from our amusing and lighthearted articles of the month. On this, the last day of January, we look at something a bit more worthy to be called an article. /r/MensRights comes up a lot across reddit and, indeed, across the world as being one of the few centers for men’s help. It’s often attacked, and is always the center of one controversy or the other. My questions reflect that. MensRights is, undoubtedly, the home of great activists.
Again. I am not making this up.
There were some people close to me that suggested I not run this article. That the repercussions of doing so would be unreasonably bad. Well, here you go, people. This is my way of saying that a good reporter doesn’t care. A good reporter reports. It’s not in my job to care about consequences.
I’m not sure that Mr. Mendel quite understands the difference between “reporting” and “asskissing.”
/r/MensRights. Never in our society could the uninitiated imagine such a place. A place where feminism is questioned, and our culture is deconstructed to find what it’s really up to.
Hahaha, what? I was not aware that feminism wasn’t ever questioned on the internet, or anywhere else in “our society.” I mean, it’s not like I run a blog that features nearly 500 posts detailing people attacking feminism on the internet, most of them nastily and ignorantly and sometimes using the word “cunt,” and the vast majority of them not on Reddit. And it’s not like this only barely scratches the surface of the subject.
/r/MensRights is one of the last fortifications of free thought to exist on Reddit.
Yeah, that’s why I was banned – not for trolling or harassing or calling anyone names, but for politely if persistently disagreeing with the denizens until then-moderator ignatiusloyola threw a fit.
“Surely you jest,” one might tell me, “when you mean they’re alone in this regard?” No, hypothetical 19th century British gentleman, I do not. I truly mean it when I say that. What other subreddit openly questions feminism? None spring to mind, and I make it my duty to catalog various subreddits. Most end up banned or run down within a month. Only /r/MensRights remains.
Reddit: Bastion of Internet Feminism.
Nobody can say for sure whether or not they’re correct in any single regard. It’s certain that, due to the laws of probability, they’re not correct in every regard. However, it’s also certain that they’re correct in most of them. Occasionally a wackjob or two will suggest that feminism is behind Cinnamon Toast Crunch (The taste you can see!™). The accuser latches onto those wackjobs to denounce the whole movement.
Yeah, it’s not as if comments suggesting that a man allegedly wronged in divorce court should turn to murder got literally dozens of upvotes in r/mensrights, or anything.
Oh wait, they did.
Yeah, it’s not as if Men’s Rights Redditors gave literally hundreds of upvotes to a post about a t-shirt suggesting that men could be convicted of rape simply for being in a room alone with a woman.
Oh wait, they did.
It’s not as if Men’s Rights Redditors regularly give dozens if not hundreds of upvotes to posts from unhinged hate sites like A Voice for Men or Angry Harry,or fall all over themselves praising an internet-famous female MRA who thinks that many abused women “demand” their abuse.
It’s not as if they think “spermjacking” is a real thing in the world that should make all men think twice about ejaculating in the general vicinity of women.
It’s not like … oh, you can find many, many more examples for yourself.
After claiming that “people have died” after being called misogynists, while “nobody ever dies after being called a misandrist,” Mr. Mendel winds up his speech with this stirring conclusion:
I support the struggles of people who are in bad positions. I respect it, in a way, for I have also seen great struggle. My struggle is not over, nor will it end until my death. For I struggle with something that will not go away through legislation or social change. The Men’s Rights Movement, however, struggles with something very changeable. Very malleable, able to be fixed within a generation if so desired. So I will support them, for they have a fighting chance. …
/r/MensRights is controversial for a reason. In the same sense as Jews of the 1890s, Irish of the 1850s, Hispanics of the 1350s, and many more. Each generation has their controversial improvement in society. We’ve gotten off easy so far, but we have to make it happen eventually. As far back as anyone living can remember, the table has been imbalanced in one way or another, favoring men or women. It’s time the table stays level for once. We need equality.
And that’s what /r/MensRights is trying to do.
Oy yoy yoy. There’s so much ridiculousness to unpack there that it makes me tired. I think I’ll go take a nap.
Mr. Mendel followed his stirring introduction with some questions for the denizens of r/mensrights. And there was some discussion. I can’t even. Not right now. I’ll get to all that in a future post.
In the meantime, Skepchick’s Rebecca Watson – who has been on the receiving end of r/menrights’ heroic activism more than once — has her own reaction to the Men’s Rights is the Subreddit of the Day announcement.
I love the brown bear-paw mittens! Cuuuute!
Yes, those among us who are childless female feminists don’t necessarily want to eat small children, some of us do crafts with them and even make them things through knitting, crochet, or sewing.
@Cassandra: on your point of identity theft, it would totes be wonderful for some of the MRAs if we did it to them. Nothing we could write would ever be as bad as what they naturally spew, so we would probably improve their image towards decent human beings. But as we’re sworn only to use our powers for good, identity theft by us ain’t gonna happen.
Dang, I was going to thrill y’all with the tale of Setting Boundaries With The Shrink and Getting a Bonus Kitty Visit.
But it’s nearly time for the Dr Blake Mysteries to start, so you’ll just have to survive till tomorrow.
Have a nice evening, I’m just about to settle down for another episode of Supernatural and some more crochet before chucking it in for the evening. I have been battling LaTeX and WinEdt all day, just trying to do a chapter structure for my dissertation.
Supernatural, kiwi girl? What channel?
Dear lurkers: I liek u.
I looked at the Rebecca Watson article, and that birth control comic strip from the MRA reddit?! Just…Ugh! It’s so infuriatingly wrong, in so many ways I’m exhausted just thinking about it. I can understand David wanting to take a nap!
As for the subject of whether people here are welcoming or not… Well, I always find everyone very welcoming here and I mostly lurk cos I’m mostly too shy to comment. Which kinda sucks because I see fantastic conversations here about things I love like knitting and Doctor Who and Scotland (and cats! How can I forget the cats?), and then by the time I work up the courage to join in, the conversation’s off in another direction. But I enjoy reading it anyway. 🙂
The only people I’ve seen getting torn up who aren’t the obvious trolls are those who say something problematic and then, when challenged about it, refuse to apologise or listen to those they’ve hurt and instead double down. Ruby springs immediately to mind…
I highly, highly doubt anyone here would deliberately try to dox or harass someone. Fuck, I’ve even seen regulars come to Owly’s defence before when someone has stepped over the line with saying something problematic about him, and he was such a thoroughly nasty and unpleasant character.
Reading that screed by ‘Xavier Mendel’ is giving me a headache. How the hell can he be serious? Surely he’s a Poe and this is all a huge joke? Please?
Also, as usual I’m immoderately amused by the Reddit term of art for these wankers which is ‘shitlord’, because I really want someone to turn it around and write a tract entitled ‘The Lord of the Shit’. That title would have a definite ring to it (sorry!).
Kitteh’s Help, I agree the version of Barchester Towers with Alan Rickman as Obadiah Slope is brilliant, acting-wise— he is sublimely unctuous and oily. I don’t remember the rest of the production values being much chop, but the casting was excellent besides the perfection that was Rickman=Slope.
@BigMomma we have 7? seasons on DVD/blu-ray, so we’ve been working our way back from season 1 again. We’re up to season 4 now.
Lucky lady, methinks we’ll have to do that. Aussie programming so odd.
@Neurite
My unsolicited advise?
A lot of credit fixing schemes online and in the real world are scams. Once your info is compromised, you should probably go to all three bureaus (Experian, Transunion, and Equifax) and pay for their monthly credit monitoring service. It costs money, but its the only way to be sure someone else isn’t opening a credit card under your name.
Social security numbers are pretty weak. They’re given sequentially. The first three numbers are the state you’re in, the next two are correlated to your birthday, and the last 4 are used to identify you everywhere. If someone had your birthdate, and last 4 digits of your social, they could guess your SS# with pretty good accuracy. They can doublecheck it against the SSVNS.
But, getting a new SS# is probably the single easiest interaction you could have with the social security administration. Its a 2 page form. Depending of how much the identity thieves know, I suggest you do this.
Xanthe –
“I don’t remember the rest of the production values being much chop, but the casting was excellent besides the perfection that was Rickman=Slope.”
I don’t think the BBC did production values back then!:D
OMG the casting. Wasn’t Nigel Hawthorne perfect when he was doing Archdeacon Grantly’s froth jobs? And Geraldine McKewen as Mrs Proudie? I swear I love that woman. And Peter Blythe as Bertie Stanhope. I can never get over how different he is in everything else I’ve seen him in. Hard to believe he was in Rumpole of the Bailey as Soapy Sam Ballard.
Oh gosh … just looking up about Peter Blythe and I find he passed over in 2004. And that his partner was Harriet Walter (Fanny from the Emma Thompson film of Sense and Sensibility). And that Harriet Walter is Christopher Lee’s niece. And that he was knighted in 2009.
I love English TV trivial. 🙂
*trivia
Thanks guys. Yep, we have power again. I am writing this from my very own computer instead of my phone.
And yes! crochet! So much good stuff. I have this yeti that a friend of mine designed/made. Yetis are very cute. 🙂 Are you making one of those hats Kiwi Girl? I have plans to make one of these hats.
And I had someone recently use my credit card to hire a luxury car in Lebanon. How random is that?
And that differs from the rest of your advice, how?
Ka-CHING! 😀
How’re things up north, Kim? Is the water receding yet?
@kitteh, our little town was cut off and we were swarming with choppered in news crews,all waiting to see if the levee would hold.
It did but we were ordered to evacuate prior to flood peak. We decided to ignore that,given our house is raised and we had just done our 2 week shop.
Levee held,still cut offbut waters falling. Now they to clear the mud and debris of the roads before we are let out.
The rivers around here have gone down, but now it’s just started pouring rain again. I thought living on top of a mountain would mean not worrying about floods.
Glad you came through ok BigMomma.
You too Kim. We have just had a storm too.
It’s 4th flood in 6yrs, luckily it’s MASSIVE river so it floods VERY slowly.
I started commenting here pretty recently and everyone has been great.
I lurked for a while before hand to see what the tone of the community was and what the ground rules are. It’s the same for any group of people.
Obviously you can’t lurk in real life but when you join an established group of people it’s common sense to listen more than you talk for a while to see what the dynamics are and what is and is not acceptable.
Re Wuthering Heights: I really liked this asnwer to a do my homework for me request as an analysis of it (it’s Wuthering Heights as science fiction).
As to Dickens. I like him. I don’t think the, “he was paid by the word” is the best complaint (though I don’t think saying he was overflorid is completely off the mark). I look at other popular writers of the time, and they were just as wordy, but much more purple.
And they had more convolute storylines. It was (as with noire) the convention of the day. It hasn’t aged well, perhaps, but modern lit may suffer the same fate.
1) I minored in journalism, and spent an enjoyable six months writing for a local newspaper post-graduation. Sadly, the pay was crap, so I had to abandon it for more lucrative employment. Good times.
2) I remember being new here, about a year ago. And then I started commenting, somewhere about… eight months ago? I recieved a warm welcome, but occasionally I still said stuff that was wrong and needed to be called on it. (hey, it turns out all that ‘common knowledge’ and ‘recieved wisdom’ we have? Most of it is just there to prop up the status quo! Question everything.) There are other places around the web I like, but this one remains up there as one of my favorites.
3) Dickens could do some great, just fantastic writing. There are passages that need to be read out loud for maximum effect, and they never fail to delight. There are also long pointless passages that should have been cut, but he’s still well worth skimming over the chaff to get to the heady delights of the better stuff.
4) I was just reading about what sets Austen apart from the other writers–the stone-cold in-your-face feminism, of course. (linkie)
Naïf: Social security numbers are pretty weak. They’re given sequentially. The first three numbers are the state you’re in, the next two are correlated to your birthday,
No, that isn’t how it was done (and it was change in 2011, so even such aspects as you didn’t mangle are no longer relevant to newly issues numbers.
That was the plan, when the number was devised, but it was never implemented that way;
Yes, prior to 1972, the first three digits were state but in 1972 this was changed so that the number was based on the zipcode from which the request was sent (which is why my sister and I have very different set of digits at the front of our SSNs).
The 2 digit sequence was planned to be linked to birthdate, but this was never implemented, and it is allocated in a non-sequential ordering, and issued as requests for SSNs come in.
The terminal four digits are assigned sequentially to each pair of 3/2 digit combinations.
So no, it’s never been so easy as that (state/birthday/9,999 [there being no 0000) possibilities). Even if that had been the way it was done, prior to 1972 most people, prior to the early 90s, didn’t get an SSN until they got a job, most people under the age of 57 would not have any of those defects in design in their numbers.
SSA fact sheet (because I am willing to double check my facts)
As to the, “get a new SSN” that is (speaking as someone who has had friends dealing with this) not always the best course, and one which benefits from speaking with a lawyer who specialises in SSA related issues, as later reconciliation of earnings data (which is linked to number) can be problematic; esp. if others have been using the number to commit frauds, as that can lead to confused records of income.
Wait, wait.
People here are mean to newbies?
Because I was greeted with open requests for maple syrup recipes, which in my view is not mean.
Gasp! Demanding your maple syrup recipes? Tearing them out of your hands, removing them from you so that you no longer had them?
Oh, this commentariat is cruel, so cruel……