Well, so far this is my favorite response to Jaclyn Friedman’s American Prospect piece on the Men’s Rightsers and that woman-hating problem of theirs. Because what better way to refute charges of misogyny than by declaring derisively that you “can usually spot whether or not a woman wrote a piece by the first few sentences?”
Let’s let rjworks13 explain just why Friedman lacks the intellectual heft to be taken seriously by serious men with credentials — sorry, CREDENTIALS — like him:
Oh boy.
I have to say that very favorite sentence of all in this wondrous bit of HeManWomanHatersplaining is this one, if it can even be called a sentence:
CREDENTIALS: I’m a long-time trained technical and creative writer from male-based military training and put to use over 20 years.
Oy. I can only assume from the evidence of this, er, sentence, that as a technical writer his job is to make sure that instruction manuals are as unreadable as possible. And that his “creative” writing most likely consists of many volumes of self-published Gorean porn.
If you want to compare Jaclyn Friedman’s CREDENTIALS with his, you can always go to her Wikipedia entry. I looked around a bit for rjworks13’s Wikipedia entry, but he doesn’t seem to have one.
rjworks13 was evidently so proud of this bit of writing of his that he deleted it. Luckily, I grabbed a screenshot beforehand. ABS: Always Be Screenshotting.
PS What’s “indifference propaganda?”
No, it’s not like there isn’t enough of that in feminism anyway.
Even before that, her “Oh but I want Feminist Times to be like Private Eye” just has a lot of side-eye from me. Sorry, putting out pieces about forced sterilisationor by some guy on about his love of porn doesn’t sound either satirical or feminist. She really comes across like her understanding of satire is the same as the MRM’s. Never mind she’s punching down (pretty obvious she’s happy to do that from the Bulger article), never mind that’s not what satire’s about. She just sounds like an attention-seeker.
At best, her editorial judgement is terrible. I’d have reservations even without that based on the fee issue, but if you can’t put out even a couple of issues without leaving potential readers going “WTF is this shit?” then you’ve horribly misjudged your market.
So I played around with the Gender Guesser (ran through it a year and a half worth of longer devart journals): It guessed me male most of the time. I only got female on 3 pieces: 1 about racism, 1 about the funereal of a family member, and 1 highly nostalgic rant about tabletop RPGs. (Does this thing equate “talking about family/friends and emotion” with being a woman?)
But then again not being a native speaker probably didn’t help.
Google also thinks I’m a guy… also older 35-44. And gave up on guessing language. ^^;
I tried out that Gender Guesser using three fanfiction stories I wrote years ago.
I came up as weak Male for two of them, and weak Female for one. Strangely enough, the one that came up “weak Female” was one that I had written from the first-person perspective of a MAN.
DOH! >.<
BTW: Ally S might like these stories; they are "Slayers" fanfics. 🙂
I’m gonna have to find some of Louis’s letters from his earthly days and plug ’em into this thing.
Come to think of it, the thing’s analysis of historical letters, journals etc generally would be amusing to see.
Thank you!
I hated it, hated it, hated it! I think you said everything I ranted at Mr M about!
That porn article was just so pointless, to summarise he said:
I like porn with large ladies, which somehow makes me a new feminist man.
I realise porn is bad mmkay.
I’m totally gonna go on watching porn.
I mean fine, but what the fuck is this doing in a feminist magazine?
Also, what the hell is wrong with that website? I haven’t seen a format like that since 1995!
It is shockingly bad, I could do better on wordpress with a bottle of vodka and a single afternoon!
And I’ve not even touched on that taboo corner shit!
I totally agree that Raven is the last person who should be doing this, more white middle class feminism we do not need.
I have no idea what you’re talking about but I’m loving how British it is.
Sooo glad to hear the comments about Feminist Times. Before it opened, I tried to contact Raven to offer some money, after I read a Guardian article about her fund raising. Emails went unanswered. Guess they didn’t need a donation. When I saw the website and the fee structure, all I could think of is that they don’t understand digital media very well. Plus, the content was boring and ham fisted. Just like Ms magazine is boring and worthy. It’s kind of same old same old. I’d love some feminism that’s a bit older than Jezebel and not so celebrity and pop culture focused, that it still fun and subversive.
@bodycrimes, totally agree, Jezebel has some good articles but for me feels too pop media.
It would be nice to have a slightly more academic, Man Boobz snarky version.
The Man Boobz community should all contribute and make our own. Now that’s an online feminist magazine I could enjoy.
@ophelia. I was just thinking that myself. Get a group of likeminded bloggers together and create a magazine. And not just about sex, which – as entertaining as it is – has been talked about ad infinitum. About tech stuff and gaming and women in philosophy and all those other current flashpoints. And women entrepreneurs – too much old school feminism disapproves of women who’ve joined the capitalist project.
@bodycrimes
To me, it seems Man Boobz and the comments section is one of the only truly inclusive, funny and academically minded feminist sites online.
It embraces the complex issues surrounding all groups who identify as feminist. Many say they do, but in practice they seem to be in the dark ages.
There is a massive gap for intersectional feminism that is funny, inclusive, and actually understands digital media.
Ooh, ooo, Instead of a taboo corner we should totally have a troll corner. 🙂
I can’t write, but if you go wordpress.org I will totally design an entire theme for this project.
@ophelia
I’d love reading that 🙂
I, too, would read the hell out of a Man Boobz magazine.
I’m so glad that I’m not the only one going “WTF is this shit?”. And hey, I know I’m not the only person here with writing and/or editing experience, so a group site could in theory be done.
I quite like the general idea of Jezebel, my main problem with it is that it’s part of Gawker and that means lots of blatant troll-bait and a tendency to dumb things down. Also, am I the only person who doesn’t find Lindy West funny? I get that funny is what she’s going for, but it falls flat a lot of the time from my perspective.
A Man Boobz magazine would be fabulous! =D
Brooked:
Alf Garnett was the main character in Til Death Us Do Part that ran 1965 – 1975. It satirised British working class racism, among other things. You know All In The Family? That was based on Til Death Us Do Part.
Game on for a Manboobz mag.
@ bodycrimes
On your comment about trying to contact Raven to offer financial support and not getting a response – that’s such a perfect illustration of what’s wrong with her approach. Obviously media people can’t answer all their emails (I know I ignore a lot of PR stuff that’s just not relevant), but if a supporter contacts you to offer money, you respond, even if it’s just to say “thanks but we’ve got that covered”.
I sometimes find Lindy West funny. Her review of the Game of Thrones books was pretty hilarious. But most of the time I’m more “meh” (autocorrect tried to change that to “hen”).
Man Boobz : the Magazining sounds fantastic.
Hit post too soon: We have to have a regular scented fucking candles review page. And maybe a beauty column. And maybe a regular Man Boobz Mythos feature, where we can list the weird things they claim about David & other manboobzers.
Manboobz Mythos should be gems from our trolls though. Like Spanish and Russian sharing an alphabet.
Hm…that could be “trolls say the darnedest things” huh?
Yeah, I think “(Misogynist) Trolls Say the Darnedest Things” would be a good heading for that.
OT but also from the Guardian – look, creepy “it’s not pedophilia it’s ephebophilia and it’s natural and wah you’re trying to repress me” comments ahoy!
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/21/balthus-cats-girls-paintings-provocations-metropolitan-review
This is one a particularly good example of the “creepy older dudes who want to fuck adolescents wank endlessly about it online” subspecies.
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/28160511