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Reading through some of the stranger comments from MRAs and PUAs and other manospherean types I often find myself wondering to what degree this “new misogyny” reaches beyond the internet. I don’t mean old-fashioned misogyny and sexism, which are obviously fairly common offline. I mean the elaborate misogynistic ideologies we discuss here – the “feminism runs the world,” “all women are hypergamous bitches who will dump you in a second for an alpha,” “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” kind of stuff.
I run across much less of this offline than on, though the people I hang out with aren’t exactly a representative sampling of the general public.
So I’m asking you, dear readers, to tell me a bit about your own experiences. Do you run across MRAs/PUAs in the real world on a regular or even an irregular basis? Where (online or off) did you first encounter MRAs and/or PUAs? What aspects of what we might call the manosphere ideology are the most common offline? If it seems less common offline, is this because the beliefs are not that widespread, or is it that people are less willing to say the kind of horrific misogynistic shit they say online to other people face to face?
Thoughts?
Reporting from Austria: I once saw the words “we live in a misandrist society!” spraypainted on the side of a government building, but I haven’t run across any MRAs in the flesh yet.
I haven’t read the other comments yet so sorry if this breaks the flow of the thread — hey! Longtime lurker (since the blog began actually) — used to comment under a different AV.
ANYWAYS! So, long story short, I am an erstwhile anthropologist, currently working as a model. In modeling we have a term for creepy dudes who take up photography and immediately start casting for models to shoot erotic nudes: “Guys with Cameras” or “GWCs”. They don’t take any time to get good at photography or practise, and jump straight in to posting casting calls for girls to come and get naked pictures of themselves in this guy’s bedroom, either on the bed (“boudoir” style) or with a white sheet behind them (“glamour” style).
On modeling casting sites like ModelMayhem and PurplePort they will fill up the forums doing the typical “keyboard hero” thing: writing pages and pages of incoherent raging about how entitled and awful models are: they have even introduced the term “white knighting” to the modeling world, by accusing photographers who support models with things like accusations of sexual assault or underpayment of such, insisting that models are whiny and the architects of their own downfall. Some of them get angry when a model doesn’t automatically want to shoot “TFP” (time for print) with them, meaning they are angry that women who do this as a profession want to be paid for it in more than pictures.
I’ve had the unfortunate experience of doing this kind of shoot when I was first starting out and didn’t have the luxury of being choosy about with whom I worked. He would use every excuse to touch me or adjust my wardrobe/hair, and got very offended when I asked for the promised payment. He acted like the fact that he was taking ‘modeling’ photos of me meant that we had some level of intimacy, whereas I was just trying to make a little money to cover rent and get ahead.
TL;DR, I deal with pseudo-MRAs often in my profession.
Does a book count as real life? If so, I was reading a book called Conversations in a Brothel and I was amazed to find one of the interviewees (Spiro, 36, Public Servant, p. 79) basically spouting much of the same stuff MRAs do. Some key quotes.
Relationships with women (and children!) as a means to an end:
Inability to empathise with women:
Cognitive dissonance:
Sex as a “right”:
Asking for it:
Feminism not about equality, about women gaining more power:
The most common bit of MRA-think I encounter in real real-life is the mother/house-wife = not work. Actually I ran into it last night (one of the rare occasions I got to go out given my, er, “work”?) from a friend of mine who fancies herself a feminist. She had a hi-larious story about how her friend had to fill out a form designating her occupation, and so she told her friend not to put “housewife” (anything but that!) but to say that she was an “artist” instead. I went home early that night.
I’ve seen “friendzone” irl as well. It’s a bit depressing when I think about the implications of that. I wonder if he is only being my friend on the off-chance that my partner and child will die in a car-crash or something?
Speaking of cat prints, it turns out that cats have been walking where we were trying to write for centuries.
Being an somewhat asocial 57 year old man, I cannot say I have knowingly encountered MRAs.
That said, it is obvious that a segment of US athiests are. Their attitude towards women athiests is jaw-dropping. Rebecca Watson, Greta Christina, Jen McCreight, just to mention a few women that started shit-storms by suggesting women might like feeling safe at conventions.
Also, there is a segment of conservatism that tends that way: (link to Feb 19, 2013 Pandagaon at Raw Story) http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/19/anti-feminist-contorts-himself-trying-to-portray-accomplished-women-as-not-well-rounded.
Don’t get me wrong, I have encountered plenty of douchebags, but not necessarily MRAs. As an example, in the 1980s I encountered police officers who would actively talk women out of charging their abusive spouses. I don’t know what their motivation was.
I apologize for going slightly off-topic now, but speaking of douchebags, hello trolls!
I know you guys like to think you are clever and witty, but I have some bad news for. You are all identical. You are the same person I have met hundreds of times in the last 40 years. The only thing that changes is the name. You all think you are witty, clever and original except you are all exactly the same, The same arguments, the same methods of argumentation and refutation. The same hilarious belief in your superior intellect. Guys, if this is your idea of being original, you are failing miserably by being a photocopy of a zillion other guys…many of whom have already died of old-age.
At the moment I remember only one thing. For some reason people around me in real life act like women being the heads of the house is some kind of aberration (and they are always mean and bossy too).
I think they have the general idea of “pussy-whipped” already in their minds but no word for it in Spanish (my first language).
As you all should expect by now, no one can actually explain what is so bad about a woman being the head of the house other than simply insinuating the guy is “unmanly”.
I was a friend with a misogynist once. It was weird ’cause when he saw me as me he was fine with me, but he hated women and we were all gold diggers and stuff. Except for me. I hated being his exception. 8/ It seemed to be trying to make me not a woman because he knew and liked me.
He was inaccurate on a lot, though. Once he told me I wasn’t as liberal as I thought I was. He was shocked when we all took this political measure and I was a leftist; he was sure I’d be conservative. We got in an argument about abortion, and he literally hadn’t thought through the fact that there was a rape-and-incest exception completely upended his claim that it was about preserving life, which told me how little he’d thought about it.
I’ll never forget our last political discussion where I had logiced him into a corner and his riposte was that I should stop getting my political arguments from Michael Moore. I was able to reply, quite truthfully mind, that I’d never seen one of his documentaries, but I heard he agreed with me. He was completely flatfooted; it had never occurred to him that I thought through my political beliefs and had reasons for them, rather than obeying a liberal authority.
One great thing about the last few threads is that we’ve had the chance to say Hi to plenty of new cool people and delurkers. The trolls are the same old, same old, of course, like joanimal just said.
So, Hi again, cool new people and delurkers! Hope you keep posting. 🙂
katz, love that pic of the kitty prints! Imagine the cursing that must have gone on when the writer or owner of the book saw that.
I’m now wondering how many of Cardinal Richelieu’s papers might have looked like that … he had (still has, of course) LOTS of kitties.
@ Deoridhe
In a weird way that makes sense. Misogynists tend to see women as caricatures rather than people (same with any similar sort of hatred for a particular demographic), and if he liked you then you couldn’t have been a Bitchy Castrating Feminist, so that meant you must be a Good Woman, whatever that looked like in his mind.
There’s a certain sort of unexamined opinionated person who equates their opinion so completely with being sensible and rational that they are honestly surprised when they meet a sensible, ratonal person who disagrees.
*rational
I had a Princess Bride moment reading that, except I don’t think a misogynist deserves to play Westley or Inigo (even though Westley’s a douchebag to Buttercup).
😀
Misogynists can be whatsisname, the prince who wants to marry Buttercup.
Haa haa haa! It was a bit swords at dawn. I was unpracticed in logic then – I’m much better now; it’s astonishing to me how much better I was than him at logic given his opinion of himself, though! I’m more used to being the stupid one in the room (I’m the dumbest of my core family – this is not a self-insult, as they are incredibly intelligent, but I’m used to being outlodgiced).
Prince Humperdinck, wasn’t it? Though the trolls here have a touch of Magic Mike – “La la la la I can’t hear youuu!”
Ha ha, I love watching the logic takedowns here. I’ve no training in it at all, so can’t do the formal stuff or really get into it, but oy, with these trolls it ain’t that hard. 😀
@ Kittehs
Trust me, you can out-logic all of our regular trolls without any formal training. Even the smart ones are too agitated to muster up much logic.
Miracle Max. Magic Mike is the Channing Tatum stripper movie. 😀
I’m trying to picture an MRA stripper. Would he angrily throw the tips back at the customers and rant about them being contaminated with flouride designed to make him gay out of a desire to destroy male sexuality?
@katz
Thank you. The ancient paw prints will have me chuckling for days.
LOL I got a name from a movie I’ve never even seen! That’s gotta be worth some points.
An MRA stripper would be like watching The Full Monty but without anything funny or sympathetic about the main characters.
And “flouride” now has me thinking of Owly as a stripper NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOO
That’s what I was picturing, an OwlyStripper with decorative manacles, forcing educational pamphlets about the New World Order into the hands of bemused customers.
That gives kinky a whole new and scary definition.
Just say no to non-consensual prosthelytizing.
@cassandra re; MRA stripper
“Would he angrily throw the tips back at the customers”
1. because tips are an insufficient apology for his oppression.
2. because tips cannot end his incelebacy.
3. because in a just world, they would be offering sex. (Ok thats actually not funny, but neither are MRAs.)
4. because a true MRA cannot be bought off with the crumbs from the oppressors’ table.
5. because only an MRA can feel the true pain of the oppressed and small bills cannot relieve that pain (on the other hand, large bills can.)
“No” seemed to have too many syllables for Owly to understand.
Though it could have been the Cyrillic alphabet that confused him.