A couple of days ago, Rachel Swirsky — an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who posts at Alas, A Blog and sometimes comments here on Man Boobz as well — sent along a link to a brilliant, brutal, and horrifying short story she’d recently published in Apex Magazine. Titled “Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings,” the story is essentially her attempt to get inside the mind of a violent misogynist.
As the editor’s note to her story explains:
Swirsky wrote this piece after talking to multiple editors who worked with horror stories, all of whom reported receiving many submissions about men murdering their wives or ex–wives. Despite the fictional veneer and supernatural justification [for the murder], many have the feel of personal revenge fantasies, and most characterize the women through disturbing, misogynist stereotypes. Swirsky wanted to see if it was possible to write a story that included all the markers of the trope but nevertheless subverted it.
In writing the story, Swirsky told me, “I drew heavily on Manboobz for mood and imagery, to try to get the sense of the narrator.”
So, enjoy. But first, I should warn you that the story is very violent, very disturbing, and could very well be triggering. So giant TRIGGER WARNING.
Here’s the LINK.
I think we’ve noted before that the failure mode of satire is when it can be taken as simply a straight version of the thing it attempts to satirize.
I didn’t read it–I filled up my quota of ultra-violence last night watching John Dies At The End. (which, incidentally, was GREAT)
I’m not going to read the story because, lets face it, there’s enough floating misogyny and rape/murder fantasy floating around the world that I don’t need to read an artificial version to get that it exists. There are ways you can do soemthing useful within the horror genre to parody or question male misogyny and rape/murder fantasies, but writing entirely within the a narrow focus, first person, unreliable narrator isn’t the best way.
I’f I’d been her I’d have explored writing this from the point of view of the editor who gets these submissions and, for example, discovers that the writer (s) aren’t writing fiction, or that the writers are known to them and now the editor can’t erase the images and ideas from their head when dealing with the real world person they know as their doctor/lawyer/minister.
As a writing excercise how does what she has chosen differ from just copying out a Roosh/MRA blog submission and presenting it as a work of fiction? Its not enough commentary to reproduce something in a nearly identical format.
I found it horrible – though I admit I skipped a fair bit of it. And I found the unreliable narrator *far* *too* unreliable. In fact, having been married long ago for a few years to a very not-nice, consistently threatening but only occasionally violent man, I found the italicised “internal” thinking and imagery totally unconvincing.
As far as the Poe’s law goes, I don’t think she ever made up her mind whether she was dealing entirely with people who do know how IPV usually/ often/ sometimes goes, or whether she’s interested in men’s attitudes to and fantasies about IPV in the same unreal fictional way that writing about zombies can be. She certainly hasn’t picked up the idea, or her writing skills weren’t up to conveying, that many men who talk and laugh. or write fantasies, about IPV have themselves been violent towards their partners.
She says she’s interested in the mindset of these people but I very much doubt she knows the topic well enough to do a convincing job of getting into such a person’s mindset, merely getting into how a bad writer gets things done is not a worthwhile objective. It seemed a bit formulaic – a bit like a script for an episode of a crime show that’s never going to be filmed, let alone broadcast. You know the sort of cheap formula that occasionally has the serial killer/ other asshole mumbling their thoughts or even narrating their fantasy in a voice-over.
If I had to reduce it to a few words only I’d choose 1) shallow 2) unconvincing 3) repulsive.
WP is doing that wrong login thing again. That was me.
Hey, who DID see Cabin in the Woods?
I’d like to, but like MordsithJ above, my tolerance for artistic/animated/written horror is much higher than my tolerance for photographic/film horror.
LOL at Ikonographer of all people calling someone else’s writing overwrought, and double LOL to the dude who thinks we’re psycho and totally agree with the author.
Critical thinking, these dudes do not have it.
Howard: I really enjoyed Cabin In The Woods.
I saw Cabin in the Woods, and it was soddin’ brilliant. My wife’s like MordsithJ and leftwingfox, but she was able to make it through Cabin in the Woods without nightmares. The movie is really much more about the ‘banality of evil’ than it is about extensive horror-movie sequences.
This story… Honestly, I started skipping the regular-font bits. It was the misogynist simultaneously denying his misogyny while expressing it quite clearly that was the best bit, anyway.
I read it and honestly… I’m not sure WHAT to think. Part of me is absolutely disgusted. Part of me gets what the author was going for, but I definitely think she only partially achieved it. Part of me feels like the italic bits and the narrative bits were too disjointed to feel like adequate commentary on each other. Part of me wants to read it over a few more times to really figure out where my critiques are. But it was just too damn gross.
We can easily find you dozens of examples of MRAs celebrating violence against women (many of them have been published on this website). Marc Lepine? Celebrated by the MRM. George Sodini? Celebrated by the MRM. Scott Evans Dekraai? Celebrated by the MRM.
And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head without using Google. There are many, many more examples.
I’m very averse to gore in movies, but I not only did I get through Cabin in the Woods fine but I also really enjoyed it. Then again, I also loved Shaun of the Dead . . .
can’t wait to see World’s End.
And that’s the context I needed. 😀
Violence against zombies doesn’t count.
Yeah, well, the fact that you reduce manosphere dudes’ hatred and dehumanization of women to “saying mean things” says a lot about you, so…
How long before atdevel is screeching on reddit about how theres a novel by manboobz about how all men are evil murderers. And probably about David Futrelles weight obv.
In terms of the story I found it rather dull. It really isn’t far from a lot of the misogynist garbage you come across and frankly I’ve read more disturbing harry potter fanfic (seriously). It just somehow lacked any kind of bite and was too long.
If anyone was wondering where I learneded my awesome story critiquing abilities:
This guy
This story felt to me more like a very accurate imitation of misogynistic writing,rather than a subversion or a deconstruction. Without the explanation about what Rachel Swirsky was trying to do, I would probably think that this story was written by someone like that quicksand guy.
LOL. MRAs MUST point out that Futrelle is fat. Because, even though roughly 30% of the population is obese, there are no fat MRAs. All Greek gods, those men. But Futrelle = fat. Because saying it NEVER gets old.
Ah, but you see it doesn’t matter what men look look like because all women are interested in is money so they (attempt to) bully mr Futrelle because…wait. Do I spy a *dun dun dun* logical fallacy?
(When I was writing fallacy my comp wanted me to write Falasha. Don’t know what that means but I like it)
I thought it worked, but it was subtle. It was mostly in the italics, which I read as the (fictional) author explaining his story. But I thought his focus on sex, his obsession with his wife while still being repulsed by her and seeing her as literally identical to her friends, and his impotence (well, you know) at the end were rather important too. I thought it really captured (in an over-the-top, graphic horror kind of way) the cognitive dissonance that a lot of extremely hateful misogynists seem to exhibit–they want women but they resent them, they’re attracted to women but they hate them, etc. The story itself wound up saying a lot (and none of it good) about the fictional author, even though he didn’t realize it (or convinced himself it didn’t).
Looking up falasha I came across a wikipedia article about ‘beta israel’. So it IS connected to mrm!
I managed to read all the way through it and… I don’t think it had the effect it was going for. It was just gross. Yes, there is a lot of MRA talk that is EXACTLY like this, but it’s not challenging it so much as trying to draw a characature. I definitely agree about Poe’s law.
Besides, reading all of those little author notes in the middle of the story kind of reminded me of being on Fanfiction.net.
LBT is making me think we should obviously put together an anthology of good alien sex stories.
Re: good alien sex stories: XXXenophile? But’s it’s a) a comic, b) not an anthology, because all stories are by the same author.