So FeMRA videoblogger Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan flapped her gums for nearly two hours the other night and sounds came out. This time she wasn’t sitting at her kitchen table blabbing to a webcam about female “hypoagency” and regurgitating misremembered factoids about bonobos but was speaking to an audience of mostly white dudes at Ryerson University in Toronto Canada.
I haven’t watched her performance — which is of course online as well — because life is short, and frankly I’d rather endure this for ten hours than subject myself to the tedious GWW for nearly two.
But I did take a look at a thread on the Men’s Rights subreddit started by a dude who hoped he and his fellow MRAs could have “a proper discussion about the talk, pros and cons, without descending into a circlejerk or a downvote party.” That’s right: he actually wanted GWW’s biggest fanboys to discuss her ideas (such as they are) on their merits.
This did not go over very well with the regulars, who jumped up to defend their favorite damsel in distress. ManUpManDown argued against the very notion of criticizing GWW, on the grounds of 1) her being supercool and 2) giving talks is hard:
Huh. But by NOT offering any criticism, aren’t you in fact treating her not as a writer or activist or, god forbid, a thinker, but precisely as a mascot?
Still, a few brave MRAs did bring up substantive critiques of her talk. For example, both 2095conash and memetherapy noted that she probably said “Right?” too often. Bluecharge, while proud of her performance, noted with brutal honesty that her “way of wrapping up points by saying ‘so there you go’ was a bit trite.”
So there you go.
Oh, I forgot to mention one dumb criticism some dumb guy made. GWW apparently suggested that if all the men in the world took three days off it would take three years to recover from the disaster that would ensue.
Essemd implied that this was a bit alarmist, arguing that if you gradually replaced men in the workforce with women — over the course of many years — it wouldn’t be the end of the world, because women could do these “men’s jobs” too. “[S]aying either gender is required because this and this job is mainly occupied by men or women is just false,” Essemd concluded.
Luckily there were a few real MRAs around to teach this fella a thing or two. Like Rikevo, who offered the powerful rebuttal that women can’t do shit:
Right?
And xNOM had a little list:
So there you go.
NOTE: I actually had that loop of “What is Love” on during most of the writing of this post. Hey, it’s a catchy song.
I’d think the “I mock it” might clue the new reader in, though
The fact that David tends to credit his readers with enough intelligence that he doesn’t have to surround words like “white knight” with giant blinking irony signs is one of the reasons I keep reading him.
I think most newbs or lurkers get it. If they don’t, they won’t last long.
“White knights?” Don’t buy into their weak-ass paradigm even if it’s just to make them look hypocritical.
Become a FeMRA and you too can be referred to as a mascot!
And honestly BreakfastMan, I had kind of the same thoughts.
I guess David does need that blinky irony sign to go with the sarcasm one.
Buuuuut…I thought feminists were all lesbians and lesbians all knew how to change tires?
Now I don’t know what generalised stereotype to believe!
@Crane:
I just realised that you might not have received an answer. She wasn’t lecturing or tutoring, she was invited by a campus group to give a talk, though the Canadian Association for Equality (warning: name is a misnomer). Any idiot can be invited to give these.
BreakfastMan: I put fuck all stock in authorial intent too…and I read it absolutely ironically. The term “white knight” is used by MRAs all the time…not long ago GWW used it herself when accusing reddit folks of “white knighting” Anita Sarkesian by not being even more horrible to her.
PLUS when you consider that so much MRA crap is projection. These men don’t think anyone who stands up for a woman could do so on the merits of her argument…they ONLY think a man would agree with a woman if he’s trying to suck up to her and get her into bed. And part of the reason they think that, is because they, themselves don’t ever support a woman unless it’s as a mascot/potential bed partner.
How ironic, then, that this concept (white knighting) which they misattribute to all feminist men, is something they tend to actually do themselves. (Similar to the comment about treating GWW as a mascot).
@cassandra
Pretty sure they aren’t fond of any women, whether they have vaginas or note. :/
@heather
Oh, shit, I’m failing my fellow lesbians XD (though I actually do want to learn how to change a tire soon, it just lacks practical application when one doesn’t have a car…)
@cassandrakitty It isn’t a matter of intelligence, though. It is more a matter of Poe’s law, I think. I mean, I have seen people unironically use terms like “white knight” (among other poisonous terms) whilst mocking MRAs. The term has infected enough of the online discourse that one doesn’t have to be a hardcore Elam-worshiper to use it and mean it, sadly enough. :
“Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of
DougDavid. I’ve seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than seeDougDavid. Even Dinsdale was frightened ofDougDavid.”“What did
DougDavid do?”“He used… sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire. He was vicious.”
@Breakfastman
I can’t speak for anyone else but all I really thought was that they think it’s fine when MRAs ‘white knight’ but it’s horrible to defend women they don’t like like feminists. I think the chances of someone taking it the wrong way probably aren’t that great, if a new person took it the wrong way they would learn what this blog is about pretty quickly, provided everything else. I would think. But I don’t know. I’m not that old a reader personally. So don’t worry.
If people aren’t willing to figure things out from the context then I really don’t think it’s David’s job (or anyone else’s) to hold their hand and gently walk them through the clue-getting process.
As much as I don’t like Straughan, I worry about what all her current fans are going to do to her when she inevitably does something they don’t like.
Meh. Some women make lifelong careers out of being the Only Girl in the Room and stomping down every other woman who tries to do stuff. I don’t get why this is fun, but something keeps Phyllis Schlafly coming into the office each morning.
I skipped to a random point in the video (good grief, two and a half hours? How many ways can one person say, “bitches, amirite?”) and listened for a few minutes. She was talking about how universities in the U.K. instituted affirmative action for women in science majors, and not only was it a huge failure, but the universities had to CLOSE ENTIRE SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS after all the women dropped out because science was too hard for their tiny brains, and obviously the departments couldn’t bring in new students or have smaller classes, no, the entire school just had to stop teaching chemistry forever.
I would like to know the names of these universities.
I couldn’t find the anti trans stuff Ally mentions on r/Men’srights, but I was momentarily terrified when I saw this headline “Billy Bragg: “I look at the news and despair for my 20-year-old son” (telegraph.co.uk)”. Has my life long hero, the lefty folk sing Bragg turned MRA sympathizer? Say it ain’t so!
The comment by r/men’srights commentors quickly quelled my fears.
Here’s what’s outraged the reddit MRAs. Sorry about the length of the quotes, but it’s Bragg being typically awesome so I went overboard.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10603033/Billy-Bragg-I-look-at-the-news-and-I-despair-for-my-20-year-old-son.html
That is some impressive thathappened.txt
Whoops, I just realized Ally is talking about the quote in this post. Sorry about the brain fart and hope the Bragg post wasn’t too off topic.
Oops, I meant to blockquote a totally different part of that, but I am a klutz:
I giggle-snorted at the contention that maintenance and construction would be crippled. Tell that to my relatives in engineering, architecture, and in the sheet metal workers union.
Also, great grandma was a computer programmer… Silly!
Then I giggle-snorted more when he forgot that without men: no children, the end.
Then I found out Katz had that thought first. Katz, you rule.
Well, after the British Empire got Victoria, the sun started to set on it. So all down hill since the 19th century, thx to women.
You’ve seen this here? If so, it’s definitely used ironically, if at all. Can’t really speak for other sites, and they’re kind of irrelevant.
Marie, don’t worry. Changing tires is way straightforward.
It’s not like cars come with manuals with a step by step guide, or anything.
Really, if he wanted to give a hard task, he should have chosen lemon-merengue pie making. I still can’t get it right…
I always feel like responding to the “working on cars is so haarrddd” guys with a demand that they go make me a perfect souffle. Cause I’ve tried both, and the souffle is harder.
Don’t let Albert hear you say that. 😀