I’m back from a brief vacation in Migraineland, and thinking about the ways in which Men’s Rights Activists love to appropriate the language of feminism and other progressive movements, usually in ways that are face-palmingly ass-backwards.
Take this recent discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit of the dire threat of “fake gamer girls” invading the “male space” of gaming. The generically named guywithaccount sets up the discussion with this post:
![I want to talk about "fake geek girls" (self.MensRights) submitted 9 days ago by guywithaccount For those of you who don't know about this, there's a bit of a controversy in what I'll call the geek community. Apparently, when women attend geek conventions (that is, those celebrating e.g. video games, comic books, sci-fi and fantasy), some men accuse them of being "fake geeks" or demanding that they prove their "geek cred" by correctly answering trivia questions made up on the spot. Here's one article (of many) that talks about it: [1] http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2013/08/08/the-fake-geek-girl-nonsense/ My concern for this issue is that, like anything else that involves gender, feminists and feminist sympathizers are attempting to dominate the discussion and frame the whole thing from a feminist and gynocentric perspective. The prevailing analysis might be summed up as "geek culture is deeply misogynistic, and the people complaining about fake geeks are just sad little losers who hate women." IMO, the geek subculture has provided a somewhat-safe space for many men who have been snubbed by the rest of society, where they are not expected to prove their value to each other by carving notches in a bedpost or exemplifying traditional masculine traits. The increase in mainstream appeal and female participation over the past decade or so threatens the safety and exclusivity of this space, and the backlash from male geeks is a somewhat-predictable response to the invasion of their space. Of course, there are few spaces just for men, and when someone tries to create or preserve one, they're accused of misogyny. I suspect that some of you don't give a crap about any of this and see the whole thing as petty, but realize that it's not happening in a vacuum. I believe it's merely a symptom of the fact that men have almost no voice in gender discussions and their needs are routinely denied or ignored.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fakegeek.png?resize=573%2C541&ssl=1)
Now, there is a teensy bit of gold in this pile of bullshit: the notion of a “safe space,” where oppressed people can come forward and discuss their issues without fear of being talked over or shut down by those outside their group — who have more power in the world and who may not have their best interests at heart (or who may just be Blabby McBlabbypants types).
But there are a couple of giant problems with this notion when it comes to gamer dudes declaring gaming a “safe space” for men. The first is that, despite lingering resentments over being “snubbed” in high school or wherever — evident in the OP and in comments throughout the discussion — these guys are not actually an oppressed people by any measure that really matters.
Indeed, many of them — as tech dudes in a male-dominated tech world — are in fact in fairly privileged positions. For them to claim they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from the evils of “fake gamer girls” is a bit like Klan members claiming they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from blacks, Jews and Catholics. (Which is more or less what Klan members have argued over the years, albeit in less PC language.) No, I’m not claiming that all MRAs are the equivalent of hood-wearing Klan members. Only some of them are.
The second problem with the “game world as safe space for men” aregument is that YOU CAN’T JUST DECLARE BIG CHUNKS OF THE WORLD TO BELONG TO MEN. Yes, men dominate the gaming world in sheer numbers, both as game-makers and game-players. (While women make up nearly half of all game players — 47% — men tend to dominate the “serious” games that many geek dudes claim are the only ones that really count.) But gaming doesn’t “belong” to men any more than, say, novel-reading “belongs” to women — even though surveys suggest that women make up a staggering 80% of the fiction market in much of the English-speaking world.
Yep, that’s right: Women dominate “noveling” much more dramatically than men dominate gaming. Yet you don’t find women denouncing “fake noveler boys” or declaring that the male brain isn’t wired to understand the subtleties of written fiction.
No, in fact men are actively welcomed into book clubs. And my best friend, a woman, has spent much of the 18 or so years or our friendship trying to get me to read this novel or that novel, though over the years she’s only succeeded in getting me to read maybe one or two of her suggestions, which were pretty good, I have to admit. (I do plan to read some of the others, really.)
If you’re a socially awkward guy and want a safe space to discuss that, find a therapist, find a support group. Don’t pick on women gamers and pretend this is somehow your right because you’re oppressed as a socially awkward guy.
Anyway, here are some other dumb comments from the Reddit thread. YetAnotherCommenter warns feminists that they may lose some powerful allies if they continue acting so feministy.
Speaking of nerds who can’t get laid — which we weren’t but which these guys keep bringing up (and identifying themselves as) again and again — guia7ri seems to harbor some lingering resentments from high school, and who better to take that out on than attractive geeky women?
Hey MRAs, if you wonder why feminists sometimes describe MRAs as bitter men who hate women because they can’t get laid, it’s because MRAs like gui7ri so often EXPLICITLY DECLARE THEMSELVES BITTER MEN WHO HATE WOMEN BECAUSE THEY CAN’T GET LAID.
Meanwhile Byuku blames it all on evil feminists pretending to be geeks in order to make trouble. Because that’s what feminists do.
That’s how they get you!
EDIT: Added a sentence to temper and clarify my assertion that men “dominate” gaming.
Then they’re oblivious fools. Several years ago a pic prominently made the rounds of the internet with a woman wearing a tee shirt stating “I have the pussy so I make the rules”. .
Argumentum ad T-shirt. Bang-up job there, Socrates the Modest.
False modesty is unbecoming.
And then there was a spaceship, and the aliens came out and said “Asher, you are just the man we were looking for! Can you fix our ship?”, but he said “no, because you lack intellectual honesty”. And then a unicorn offered him a blowjob and a million dollars in bitcoins.
Um, parsimonious? You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
adjective: parsimonious
1. unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal.
What I will not, ever, grant is the idea that establishing an identity, of any sort, means relying on general sentiments to establish other identities as BAD.
how you managed to infer this from my comment is bewildering. Wait, no, now I understand it. You are enmeshed in a general social environment where the term exclusionary implies inherent “badness”. What you are doing is taking a sentiment that is probably standard in your social circles (exclusion=bad) and imputing a priori status to it.
Exclusion is to leftists
what
Original sin is to christians
The source of evil.
For those of use who do not subscribe to your ideology and who do not share in the notion that “exclusionary” carries some sort of inherent “badness” the response to “that’s exclusionary” is … “so what?”
You’re such a master of argumentation.
Unlike your notion of “bad,”
What is regarded as “bad” is simply contingent on time and place; sentiment. Unlike most of you, here, seem to do I do not attribute a priori status to what I consider “bad”.
Can we just end the thread here?
So…how does gay men having all the sex prove evolutionarily beneficial?
Argenti, parsimonious in the way he’s using it comes from the word “parsimony,” which means something else entirely.
@Asher:
Good lord.
Example time: A light will turn on if two buttons are both pushed down at the same time. The buttons are placed in separate rooms, and the rooms are connected by telephone for communication. Into each room is put a person, person A and B, who each have to decide whether or not they push the respective button. They may talk to each other, but one person cannot force the other to push the button.
Who decides if the light will turn on or not? Who is the gate keeper?
Thus with sex (barring rape and only talking about two-person sex anyways).
*sigh* Nobody bothered answering because it was a silly question, nobody agreed with its premise (the idea that in every situation where one party has power over another, the other party must have some power over the first), and everyone knew you already had an answer in mind and were just JAQing off.
“And then there was a spaceship, and the aliens came out and said “Asher, you are just the man we were looking for! Can you fix our ship?”, but he said “no, because you lack intellectual honesty”. And then a unicorn offered him a blowjob and a million dollars in bitcoins.”
hahahahahahahaha.
“asher is a moron” About 18,300,000 results (0.35 seconds)
asher is a moron About 18,200,000 results (0.83 seconds)
“asher is a moron” About 8 results (0.53 seconds)
Did you intentially leave out the quotes for the exact phrase and then reintroduce them when you copied it to the comments form? Nice try.
Ah, so now we see why it’s okay for Asher to be intellectually dishonest, he exists in a different context where intellectual dishonesty is not “bad”
I take back my previous comment, he is boring.
“asher is boring” About 55 results (0.84 seconds)
Again, with the ommision and reintroduction of the quote marks. Look pretty intellectual dishonest.
And that’s why you’re bragging about it now.
Look, pretty grammar!
But then all the other students figured out it was me anyway, partly because the unicorn was still following me around. It was a male unicorn, you see, so it was really motivated to keep offering me that blowjob. And then the other students elected me Official Genius and Dictator For Life.
Hey dipshit, I pulled “asher is boring” and the results straight out of my ass for you. I ain’t got time got time to omit shit. I thought you would love assfax, as it’s your entire M.O.
Did you just do an experiment to determine if something was true or not? OH NO!
Wow, this guy really does have Spock Syndrome. LOL at the taking the Google search jokes literally.
^ apparently I’m remixing myself today. awesome.
Yeah, it’s completely impossible that that person used the quotation marks only to distinguish the search query from the rest of the phrase. If the quotation marks are there, that implies they were part of the search query as well!