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.
@hellkell: I have seen it used on sites beyond here, and I don’t think it is irrelevant. I mean, David isn’t just writing solely for the community here. He is writing to keep a record of the horrible shit these people believe. I know I have used a number of articles from here on other sites to illustrate how horrible the MRA is. Hell, someone linking an article on a forum is how I found the site.
I would rather put in a new alternator than make a pie crust.
Breakfastman: He’s writing to mock misogyny. You are taking a very tiresome stance.
BreakfastMan, people who’ve got to this article are going to read past the headline, aren’t they? Maybe even read the comments? It’s going to be pretty obvious pretty quickly that he’s mocking their use of the term, and how they deride any man defending/siding with any woman. I really wouldn’t worry about it.
@shaenon
Oh, man, me too. I mean, citation desperately needed on her part.
@Cassandra
Well, that’s good news for me, cuz I wanna learn how to fix cars, and I hoping it won’t be too hard. :3 (when I get one, and I hope it will be when, I want to baby the fuck out of it. Idk. I just like cars.)
@ Marie
All the other stuff that needs to be done around the house that these dudes will try to convince you can only be done by a man? You can totally do it.
I’m really confused… how can a mocking site legitimize anything? Isn’t that rather like saying, “The Onion posted abut it, so it must be a real and important thing.”
Don’t send Onion links to people, they might get confused. In fact maybe we should ban it, or insist that they insert a bunch of disclaimers into all their articles.
Oops, forget, the previous comment was filled with sarcasm. Just so that’s clear.
So in more complete failures to understand anything, here’s someone from The Red Pill subreddit explaining why women like cats:
This is totally my experience, if by “work for a cats [sic] attention”, you mean “stay very still and put on a blanket” and by not “giv[ing] a fuck”, you mean coming up and flopping out of my chest while purring.
Link here:
http://rp.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1x43vw/a_theory_on_why_women_like_cats_and_guys_like_dogs/
H/T to the Blue Pill subreddit.
OMG, Cassandra, are you SUUUURE you’re being sarcastic?
@cassandra
XD that was too funny.
@wordsp1nner
I have a counter theory for them: (some) women like cats because cats are fucking adorable :3
Granted that my cat is a bit unfriendly to the cat next door, but labeling her yowling and fussing “dark triad traits” seems just a tad overdramatic.
“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.”
Half of humanity decides to just up and stop working for three days! Bad things happen! Well, no shit.
Every man in the world is an air traffic controller. All of them.
Yup, I totally had to work for these two to climb on top of me.
I totally have to work for Fribbie to come in screaming WOWWOWOWOW because me sitting on couch = she requires lap.
I totally have to work to have Mads winding her tail around my feet and then flinging herself down and doing while I’m trying to do something at the computer.
My theory: same as Marie’s about cats being fucking adorable, and MRA doesn’t get attention from cats because he’s a douchecanoe and of course they don’t like him.
xNom using computer programmers as one of roles that would cause disaster if they took 3 days off is ridiculous. Programmers are office workers dude. They take long weekends.
When I used to work with a bunch of programmers none of them ever came in before 10. Oddly enough the world seemed to keep right on running while they were asleep.
Ha. One of my cats just came up behind me on the couch and gently tapped me on my shoulder to get my attention. My other cat climbs on top of me probably 30 times a day and shoves her face in my face. Cats aren’t aloof alpha assholes getting tips from The Red Pill subreddit. At least not towards people they know and like.
(Well, ok, my last cat hated everyone but me, and sometimes attacked me as well, but she had a very rough childhood, I’m pretty sure. I rescued her as a stray.)
Oh, and on the “white knight” thing, HeatherN’s comment pretty much expresses exactly what I was thinking with that.
I debated whether or not to use the term, but decided to use it — with a giant dollop of irony — primarily because GWW uses it ALL THE TIME and is constantly accusing feminist women who are being harassed by men of “damseling” and inviting the harassment upon themselves in order to get attention from “white knights.”
The giant irony being, of course, that her MRA fanboys treat her so much like a damsel in distress that they don’t even want her to face even mild criticism *from other MRAs*.
It’s not a term I would use outside of this or some very similar context.
Re The Onion, I have Funny Facebook Status Messages and Lamebook in my reader feed, and numerous times there have been people treating The Onion posts as factual. One of the funniest was people thinking this was true: http://www.theonion.com/articles/42-million-dead-in-bloodiest-black-friday-weekend,30517/
I mean, one might think that maybe the odd person could die from being crushed in a shopper stampede, but 42 million?
Witchy kitty is definitely “dark triad” – why else would he insist on accompanying me to the bathroom? Every time. And attempt to break down the door if shut out.
Mr Hadji used to do that! We were always so pleased to have help in the toilet. Sometimes he’d help by sitting in the lap, which was a tad distracting.
Weeeeeeeell there is this http://literallyunbelievable.org/ site about people in facebook (mis)interpreting the Onion as a legitimate news source. :3
Well if we’re on the topic of cats…I actually quite like them precisely because you can leave them alone for hours on end and they don’t get all sad and worried you’ve abandoned them. Dogs are just way too clingy.