Longtime readers of Man Boobz may remember “Ferdinand Bardamu,” the pseudonymous blogger behind the thoroughly despicable In Mala Fide blog. How despicable? Well, once upon a time, “Bardamu” wrote a post with the lovely title “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” in which he set forth the proposition that “[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.” Yeah. It was that kind of a blog. You can find some more of Bardamu’s terrible thoughts in the MB archives.
You may also remember that Bardamu took down his blog about a year ago, and seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.
Except it now turns out he hasn’t been gone at all. Indeed, he’s been hiding in plain sight the whole time. For, just about the same time that Bardamu vanished off the face of the earth, a new and almost-if-not-quite-as-thoroughly-despicable new Manospere blogger appeared, writing under his real name: Matt Forney.
He’s perhaps best known for a post in which he “jokingly” offered advice on how to get away with rape by murdering your victim. Ha ha! What a card! (Ultimately, Forney deleted his post, and offered a half-hearted, feminist-baiting “apology” for it.)
Forney came out as the Artist Formerly Known As Ferdinand Bardamu on his blog last week.
His explanation for his vanishing act? In part, he explained, it was because he had started getting disgusted by some of his own followers. “Surround yourself with the worst humanity has to offer and it will inevitably wear on you,” he wrote.
It got to the point where I dreaded reading my own site because it was becoming dominated by basement dwelling neo-Nazis, MRA permavirgins and other losers I would never bother with in real life.
As much as I hate people who bitch about “hatred” and “negativity,” they were right in the end: I didn’t want to be associated with those freaks.
Yep, the rank and file of the right-wing Manosphere actually disgusts the guy who came up with “[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.” Yikes.
You’ve nothing to apologise for at all, Aaliyah; if anything I should apologise for venting anger on your behalf when it doesn’t help you at all. I just want to go all Lillyhammer and scare the bejezus out of the old wretch and make him mend his ways forevah. I know it doesn’t work that way, but HULK SMASH ARGH.
It starts on September 26. I guess that’s a decent amount of time.
Seconding Argenti’s calendar suggestion! Whether it’s “time till I can get away” or “time till something I’m looking forward to” it’s a great help, and a focus.
It’s okay. I don’t think any of you are really capable of hurting my feelings. That would require you folks to actually be insensitive.
As distinct from “bull in a china shop”!
I think appealing to your uncle is a great idea. Even if your Dad is rude to him too he’s still more likely to listen to his brother than to you, since he still thinks of you as a child.
This is probably going to be a long process where he won’t even listen to arguments the first time they’re presented, so don’t give up.
IIRC, your mother is also much more supportive. Could she be any help?
My mother and my father are almost polar opposites. She not only accepts me for who I am, but also is the most supportive person I know.
But she can’t help me here. She’s currently a SAHM who already has a lot of stress to deal with. And if she helps me directly, she may have to end up dealing with my father, and that’s the last thing she wants to do because, as I’ve stated before, he was very abusive to her (among other things). I don’t want to put her through that. I’m content with her emotionally supporting me, just as she always has done.
Have you spoken to your mother for ideas about this, Aaliyah, or would you rather not, in case it might make her feel she has to offer you a place to stay? IIRC you’d both like that, but the money (or lack of, rather) means it’s not feasible, at least till you get a job.
Thank you so much, everyone, for all of your help. I’ll be sure to follow your advice. I’m going to sleep now as my mind is in need of a lot of rest.
Night everyone.
Good night, sleep well! <3
“Longtime readers of Man Boobz may remember “Ferdinand Bardamu,” the pseudonymous blogger behind the thoroughly despicable In Mala Fide blog. How despicable? Well, once upon a time, “Bardamu” wrote a post with the lovely title “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” in which he set forth the proposition that “[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.”
And Faroosh’s newest blog “Return of Jokers” features this gem glorifying Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a man who really knew how to keep an American wife in her place;
http://www.returnofkings.com/9968/the-american-woman-has-hit-an-all-time-low
Commenter “ManWithPlan” calls it “jihad game”.
Like what is it with the Manosphere and its love affair with Muslim men?
I don’t have anything helpful to say, Aaliyah, but I’ll keep you in my thoughts and am sending Jedi hugs your way.
This week has SUCKED. Did someone summon the suck fairy while I wasn’t watching?
There are goat-in-tree calenders out there. I had one and the pictures now decorate my room. Would recommend as an investment.
More ontopic: if Forney doesn’t consider himself an MRA or a neo-Nazi, what exactly does he think he’s doing?
Deoridhe, I’m sorry to hear your week has sucked.
Have a Max-Arthur and his chick.
http://youtu.be/dlbAsho2JJc
(and if you fancy, the latest portrait of a certain gentleman dans le bain.)
😉
lol
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasStandards
Deoridhe, you can say that again. Does anyone know the proper procedure for banishing the suck fairy back to what ever hell it comes from?
@Gillian:
… And this is where I come in.
—
It’s not going to be easy. The Suck Fairy is a pernicious and tenacious foe, dedicated to ruining your week. Your luck is that its blinders become your disadvantages – it works in discrete time blocks that one can easily sum and surmise (“This week is going to suck”, “it has been a suck day”), and it seldom carries over from one block of time to the next. Identification is thus your very first priority (“Is my day currently awash with suck? Was yesterday?”). Work your way backwards and find the last day that did not suck, and try to remember what about it was great.
This won’t help, but you’ll feel better.
The amount of days since last great episode – the number of total increments of 7 + plus the amount of fingers on your left hand with dirty nails as you do this = the combined length of your current suck experience, as a tentative answer. Information is your best bet here. Unfortunately, the Suck Fairy is also quite clever, and you will never know entirely and completely how long your current curse lasts.
Next, you’re going to need a calender.
The Suck Fairy works by twisting perception so that any amount of time will also contain an unlimited amount of Suck, this Potential Suckiness, or as we could also call it, Variable State Downer, or Multi-State Shit, is what gives the Suck Fairy its tremendous power. Inability to know the future for certain is the bane of human existence, and the Suck Fairy thrives on this basic insecurity by gleaning its food from the hazardous thoughts one find oneself thinking in situations rife with suck (“Will it ever get better?”, “I suck, for sure”, “Everyone else sucks, and no one is nice”, “damn everything”). Notice how in situations wherein you have definite future goals and a clear sense of direction combined with the specific tailored events that you know you will enjoy, the Suck Fairy seems much less powerful.
This is because human happiness is anathema to the Suck Fairy.
In your calender, I would recommend writing down things you can do on days to enjoy. This broadcasts cascaditing waves of Anti-Suck into the future, confusing your foe.
Next, you’re going to need three pints of goats blood, an old oak from a country plagued with rats and a spiderweb drenched in the sweat of the mountains….
( Sorry to hear about your week, I hope it all gets better! )
—
@Aaliyah:
Good luck with everything.
I can’t say anything that any one else has not said, although I recommend the “Calendar, mark specific events approach” for combating the dread of the future. It helped me, so that’s why I’m fond of it, but your situation seems to require slightly more than solutions people are merely fond of. All the best of luck.
(“This is the day I start”, “This is the first quarter and the day I move into my own apartment”, “This is the day I spend all day playing computer games and drawing on the side”)
If you’re up for some reading, and have time, I would recommend Captain Awkward, though – it’s an advice site, and you can glean potentially quite useful information about your own situation by reading others. It also helps underscore what others have said… You’re not alone, and you are not the only one with this problem, help is available and many people will do their darnedest to give you a hand.
I scrounged up a few I could see applying, but that’s all secondhand memories, so:
http://captainawkward.com/2013/02/20/453-guest-post-how-do-i-come-out-to-my-mom/
http://captainawkward.com/2011/10/18/question-122-should-i-move-away-from-my-abusive-family/
http://captainawkward.com/2013/02/01/440-its-time-to-get-out-of-my-abusive-home-but-i-am-afraid-to-accept-help/
—
@Thread:
On second reading, I found this hilarious.
His problem isn’t the neo-Nazis, the MRA’s or anything. His problem is the specific ones he found that didn’t fit some criterion of “awesome” in his head – so he’s pretty fine with the neonazism and the rampant misogyny of abuse advocates, so long as they’re, y’know, cool about it.
“Welcome to Matt Forneys Blog, before you come in, we have three questions for you…
“So long as it ain’t wimmin’ talk, I’m good dawg”
“Right, so – I see you’ve got a pair of sunglasses. They dark?”
“Totally shaded, brah. Completely cool like old school”
“Good. That leather jacket you’re wearing, is the KKK marker there authentic?”
“What’cha think I am? Some kind of poser? It’s all real to me! Yep, it’s real”
“Allright. Okay. How do you feel about other cultures?”
“String ’em up and let ’em burn? They ain’t got squat on the white man?”
“Well, you fit all our test criterion and you’ve got a cool jacket… Clearly, you’re much better than those MRA permavirgins we normally get around here. Come on in!”
Strange, really.
“[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.”? So…in order to prevent women from behaving like chimps, Mr. Forney recommends that men behave like chimps? ‘Course, Mr. Forney probably isn’t *aware* that’s what he was doing, being as he is profoundly ignorant of primate behavior.
And there we have it. Fibinachi, 100% pure anti-suck, guaranteed!
( Addendum: None of that meant to imply your suck was a thing one could just shrug off
because such things are still things that one can’t just walk off
and sucky things suck quite seriously, its such
an easy mistake to make to accidentally tell someone off
And I didn’t mean it that way )
No, I was completely unsarcastic there. I was smiling even before you got to the goat’s blood part, I’m just trying to figure out whether I should climb the tree or try to lure the goat down first…
Yeah, that’s probably what would happen if I asked her for advice in this situation. And moving to her place, which is in Colorado, wouldn’t help anyway as I don’t want to miss the opportunity to go to UCSC. I’ve already gone this far – I don’t want to give up and settle for a lower-tier school if I don’t have to.
And as I’ve said before, UCSC has student health care that covers HRT, and I desperately want to transition as soon as I am able to; on top of all the stress I’m dealing with, my dysphoria has also been really hard to deal with. As some of you already know, my father forced me to get a haircut, and while it’s not super short anymore, it’s been taking a while to grow back (or perhaps that’s how I see it since I’m very impatient about the speed of my hair growth). Every time I look at my entire body I feel awful inside because I still look so much like a man. Every time I hear my baritone voice or focus on my masculine mannerisms I’m reminded of how far away I am from being my true self. And on top of all of that I’m dealing with internalized bullshit like “You’re just trying to fool people” and “Anyone who calls you a woman is just trying to be polite – they don’t actually believe what they say.” And the worst thing is that it’s really easy for me to believe all of that, so my self-esteem is extremely low. So the sooner I’m able to start transition the better. What I’m facing right now in regards to dysphoria is nearly unbearable. The only thing that makes me feel better (besides alleviating my dysphoria directly, which I can’t do at this time for various reasons) is trying to think about something else. But that almost never helps because eventually my dysphoric thoughts come back in full force.
@cloudiah
I quite liked Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin. It really enhanced my dental appointments. I finally understood why my eye area would be oddly numb when they’d use the local anesthetic.
Also, Alpha Beta, by John Man. It is subtitled How 26 letters shaped the western world. I’ve been fond of it for a while.
@gillyrosebee
Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants are both great.
@Aaliyah
I wish you well. Choose / Find your own family can be a really weird idea. But it works, I was born into one of them. I barely know people I’m genetically related to, but I do not lack for family. And school, a new place, would be excellent for that.
What
@serrana
says about finding someone to room with who is pretending to be more devout than they are sounds like a really good idea. And an ex-muslim school group may help you find someone like that. I’m sure they would understand being unable to be an official member, and have resources for finding people that need to hide their true selves from their families. Students frequently depend on parents who do not agree with them.
I guess I should also mention that I have a few supportive non-family folks IRL. I have only one friend my age, but I get along with my teachers very well, especially my English teacher and my philosophy teacher. Because I’m very close to them, sometimes they ask my about my current life and I tell them some things.
My philosophy teacher hasn’t offered much advice (not because she’s unwilling, though, and I don’t want to burden her anyway as she already has a stressful life), but this is pretty much what she said in an email:
What really sticks out to me is her last sentence. Since the age of 15 I’ve dreamed of one day becoming a passionate activist. Not in the sense of pretending that protesting at a building is enough to change the world. But in the sense of actively fighting against things like rape culture. Being there for survivors of abuse and assault (that’s what I cared about a lot when I was 15). Over time that same desire has evolved into a desire to join others to help make this world one free of all institutionalized prejudice. Now it’s part of a larger anarcha-feminist worldview I have today. And my eventual career goals are focused on helping out minorities – if I ever become a registered nurse later in life (after I get my B.A. in CS), I want to devote my time and energy to helping out the LGBTQ community in many ways. Like joining a collective like the Berkeley Free Clinic.
I’ve also dreamed about becoming a parent. When I didn’t come out to myself I told myself I wanted to be a father. Now as someone who realizes her real gender, I want to become an adoptive mother. That, too, is something I’ve dreamed of since the age of 18. Even if I never find a partner I still want to adopt one child and raise hir. Part of me wants to raise a child because I want to raise a child to grow up without any of the troublesome things I had to deal with.
And just recently I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to reach out and reconnect with family members who will end up at least initially rejecting me for who I am. Yes, it’s a goal that seems extremely far-fetched, but I really don’t want to be permanently separated from any family member. And surely it’s not as far-fetched as wanting to bring about significant social change. In any case, I’ll try to make the most of this upcoming reunion, perhaps spend the most quality time I can with my relatives before I come out to them some time later. Because from there it’ll all be “Stay away from [Aaliyah]; he’s a very strange and I don’t you to be influenced by him” between every cousin and parent. But even if they react to me with hatred I want to still try to reconcile with them. I even want my father to change one day, despite the fact that that’s incredibly unlikely given that he’s almost always been unpleasant for the 18 years I’ve lived in this world.
The bottom line is that I’ve made huge plans for the future. But with the way things are going now, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to reconcile with my religious family. I’m not shining at all – I’m just fatigued and emotionally drained because of feeling hopeless about my current situation. I feel like almost all of my circumstances are against me, and I have no idea why things have to be like this. And words fail to describe how depressed I feel because of the fact that I’m still unable to start following my dreams.
I think today I’m just going to try to take the time to relax. I don’t want to do anything constructive right now – I just want to calm myself down and make my stress easier to deal with. I’m sorry for writing this wall of text – it was either this or having to cry suddenly in front of the wrong people (i.e. my dad) because of bottling up everything inside.