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:
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.
Huzzah! I haz sufficiently appeased the blockquote and link monsters.
katz, That dictionary is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. And the last entry may be missing one letter at the very end. Fixing which would make it even beautyer and joyier. 🙂
Oh yeah, as to the inane idea that chopping the US into separate countries will lead to butterflies and ponies: A short essay on sovereignty, territoriality, nationalism, and statecraft.
Asher, as on everything else, is a vacuous sink of ignorance and willful fail.
Asher just seems to have a hard time understanding that anything at all exists beyond the boundary of his skull.
But to be fair it IS pretty roomy in there.
I guess he figured that since he has so much empty space it was only fair to show up here and offer to let us host a party there. Shame that the music was terrible, it really killed the mood.
One good way to prevent rape would be to tell women not to sexually abuse boys:
http://www.canadiancrc.com/PDFs/The_Invisible_Boy_Report.pdf
Finally, there is an alarmingly high rate of sexual abuse by females in the
backgrounds of rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men – 59%
(Petrovich and Templer, 1984), 66% (Groth, 1979) and 80% (Briere and
Smiljanich, 1993). A strong case for the need to identify female perpetrators can
be found in Table 4, which presents the findings from a study of adolescent sex
offenders by O’Brien (1989). Male adolescent sex offenders abused by “females
only” chose female victims almost exclusively.
Yay! You guys left me a piece to chew on!
The blighted assininity of this conclusion is staggering. He literally has declared that if the men were happy in the relationship, the women could not have been oppressed. The ‘simplest’ explanation, you dimwit, was that prior to the change, women had to choose between staying in a bad marriage, or economic ruination. This is pretty much the definition of oppression, you shitweasel. As soon as it became possible to survive outside the relationship, according to your uncited numbers, nearly half the women fled those relationships as fast as they could. Ergo, prior to that change in the laws, women were being severely oppressed.
Oh, and grumpycatisagirl? I swear, that photo of the white cat looks almost exactly like our Legolas, down to the tiny bit of eye-gunk. Is yours a shedder, too (I can brush Legolas for about two minutes and end up with enough hair for a cottonball.)
Good, your concern trolling has literally nothing to do with this conversation. I get that you’re just bursting at the seams to introduce this dubious report that nobody is gonna disagree with the basic premise of (no one should abuse children, ever), but seriously dude try to be at least a little relevant.
Freemage, yes, he sheds like crazy! I still have black clothes after having him in my life for 13 years. You’d think I would know better. You should see what I look like after I take him to the vet.
What’s dubious? Also, most rapists are raised by women in single parent households:
http://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/
When we brush Tigger I swear he lets off so much hair that we could form that hair into another, regular-sized cat.
Oh Good: You are in the same ballpark as Asher: Those “statistics” are unsourced.
Freemage: Careful, when I told the dude who thinks it ain’t terrorism if no one dies, that Korean Women not getting divorced when it would lead to poverty, I was told I was arguing for, “false consciousness”.
(I say regular-sized because Tigger himself is huge).
Good is back? That’s not good at all.
Ah, the old single-mothers-are-the-root-of-all-evil card.
I think we should just stay on the far more interesting topic of cat hair.
Whenever I brush my cat I get fluffy little tumbleweeds of hair in the hallway. They’re far more interesting than either Asher or Good.
My bengal is a huge shedder, you don’t even need to brush her, just pet her and you get enough hair on your hands to make another cat.
Our cats form tumblefurs too! And then Bailey tries to lick them, which: gross, buddy.
Waiting for Good(less) to say “that’s why women shouldn’t be allowed to divorce, because single mothers cause rape” or some such shite.
I have 7 cats. I think most of my body hair is actually cat hair that has stuck to me.
Question: why do so many cats want to lick/eat their tumblefurs? Mine always do.
Mine used to do that and then she stopped, no idea why. Now she steps disdainfully over them as if scolding me for not cleaning them up yet.
Good on,
“What’s dubious? Also, most rapists are raised by women in single parent households”
And I’m sure fatherless households have nothing whatsoever to do with fathers abandoning their children and choosing to be absent. /sarcasm
As to, “the invisible boy”. The citations are weak in the text: many are old; some of those which are used as if they were presently dispositive of thinking on the subject are more than 40: e.g. Morgan, P.K. and Gaier, E.L. (1956). The direction of aggression in the mother-child punishment situation. Child Development, 27 (4), 447-457 ).
Worse the text is a mishmash of unsuported assertions, weak examples, and distortive interpretations.
So let’s look at that quotation (I will use the entire paragraph it’s in, lest you accuse me of stripping it of context):
1: That quotation on patriarchy is 24 years old. Since the good doctor is talking of the ways in which the present system is failing boys/young men, he ought to be using a more recent discussion of patriarchy. If it is, there ought to be a more recent quotation.
2: He has taken this quotation from it’s parent sentnce, and married it to his own words; by itself not always a problem, but he attributes an attack on a cultural trait to a specfic claim that Hyde is saying this is true of, “all men” which isn’t in the quoted portion. His citation of Herman (1981) seems superfluous, and I wonder why it’s there.
His next paragraph is a discussion of kyriarchy(which hadn’t been coined as a term yet). It’s as if he realised there are separate axes of power imbalance all on his own. That he fails to address any of the work in that field at all calls the rest of his reseach/analysis into question.
3: This paper… is 15 years old. So the issue isn’t new, and this publication isn’t evidence that it’s being ignored. It actually undermines the idea. Offering it up as if it’s something Canada needs to hop on, because it’s failing, is (at best) disingenuous..
It’s, (to borrow a phrase) Double-Plus Ungood.
Well we better rush all of those single mothers into forced marriages then!
Oh wait, I think we tried that for a while…