Last week I wrote about the fondness of a certain Men’s Rights website for a certain four-letter word starting with the letter c. This week they’ve topped themselves — with a postering campaign based on the c-word.
Yep: A Voice for Men has thrown its support behind a postering campaign with the slogan: “Having a vagina is no excuse for being a C*NT.”
They don’t use an asterisk.
The postering campaign, spearheaded by a Youtube antifeminist calling himself Bane666au, feature what purport to be real quotes from feminists alongside not-exactly-subtle stock photos depicting comically angry women. For example:
I’m the one who blurred out the c-word; they left it intact. Other alleged feminist quotes include:
If a woman has drunk any amount of alcohol, she can’t consent to sex.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than the suffering of men.
Historically, women have been oppressed worse than black slaves.
That last one is a tad ironic. Not just because it’s a bit odd to contrast “women” and “black slaves” when half of all black slaves were women and girls. And not just because I never hear feminists making this claim. No, it’s a tad ironic because AVFM is constantly comparing men to slaves and suggesting that men are being “enslaved” by everything from child support payments to the women they date.
But I digress. You may wonder where exactly all these alleged quotes come from. In the comments to his AVFM post promoting the postering campaign, AVFM’s Dean Esmay blithely assures readers that “most or all” of the sources of the quotes can be found “right at the end of the video.”
This is not — how should I put it? — true. In fact, the percentage of quotations accurately sourced at the end of the video is a lot closer to “none” than to “most.” Bane666au, for his part, only claims that “all comments are based on actual comments I’ve seen or heard from self proclaimed feminists.”
Apparently he has an extremely loose definition of “based on” because only a couple of the actual quotes from Tumblr feminists he includes at the end of his video bear much resemblance to his, er, paraphrases.
Many of the alleged “hateful” quotes are obvious jokes, taken completely out of context, taking aim at popular perceptions of feminists. Here’s one screenshot from his video (with the name of the poster blurred out):
So who is the terrible misandrist who posted this terrible thing? I went and looked at her Tumblr. It consists of a lot of arty photos of her, mixed with pictures of favorite bands, some of her own artwork — and various pictures of various boyfriends, all evidently remembered with much fondness. On Valentine’s Day she posted some Valentine’s Day cards she designed and drew, inspired by The Smiths and Fleetwood Mac. She’s an excellent artist. There was no hatred to be found there.
And it’s a little hard to see how anyone but a misogynist who has named himself after a Batman villain could possibly interpret this comment, from another Tumblr feminist, as “misandry.”
And speaking of reasonable statements interpreted as misandry, here’s my favorite poster in Bane666‘s batch of posters:
Now, I hope I don’t shock anyone here by saying it, but the wage gap is real. There’s some debate over the size of it, and to what degree it is appropriate to attribute the gap to women’s “choices” rather than discrimination. But it exists. Even the study most cited by those who like to downplay the gap, a 2009 Labor Department report prepared by the CONSAD Research Corp., found a roughly 5-7% wage gap that couldn’t be explained away by women’s “choices.” (See here for more.)
But MRAs have convinced themselves that the gender wage gap is a “myth.” Having failed to win over the rest of the world to this incorrect belief through the power of simple repetition, the folks at AVFM have evidently decided to move on to gendered slurs.
It will be interesting to see how this works out for them.
@ Martin – The ableist slurs do fly pretty fast and thick here in the US. A select few are clearly off-limits, used almost exclusively by people who insist on their rights to say awful things as often as they like (re***d, for instance).
But there are plenty of ableist slurs where we literally have never been taught that they are problematic. (That of course doesn’t mean that they AREN’T problematic; it’s just that a lot able-bodied people sincerely lack a clue. We need to get a clue.)
I’ve been reading feminist/intersectional blogs for about six years now, but I honestly did not know that “spaz” had any connection to a medical condition until just this past year (I’m in my late twenties). I uprooted it from my vocabulary as soon as I knew, but I lived an embarrassingly long time truly ignorant of it. I would wager that a lot of other Americans have similar ignorance.
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Re: the actual blog post–something I don’t understand is how MRA’s can simultaneously deride Tumblr feminists as all being clueless teen girls, but then take their quotes seriously enough to represent all of feminism at all levels. Of course, teen girls can be excellent, mature, well-informed feminists, but not all of them are, and almost none of them will be running blogs of a broad enough influence to reasonably claim to be an authoritative voice for the movement.
I mean, shocker, some fourteen year-old somewhere said something immature on Tumblr. Who’d have thunk. It’s almost like fourteen year-olds are still legally not adults.
I’m so late to the party. It was wild reading from the beginning, seeing one very mild and very polite request that sirtoot not use that word and then things just…devolved from there (and totally on toot’s end – heh).
I will never understand why so many people cling to language like that. You’re having a conversation with another person and you say a word that makes them visibly cringe, and you feel compelled to continue using it. And not only do you feel compelled to continue using it, but you actually have the nerve to LECTURE the person on exactly why they are wrong for having that emotional response to the word. For what purpose? I can only assume your purpose is to continue causing pain. Because nothing else makes any sense.
Thank you David for putting that word on filter.
I have been noticing that most people don’t like to be told that they did/ said something wrong. Is it too hard or painful to say “I am sorry” or “I didn’t know; I am sorry and will not do/say it again”?
Apparently it is very painful to a lot of people.
Felisha, I swear we’ve already had this conversation with you before. As cassandrakitty pointed out, what you’re doing here is a known derailing tactic. You’re needlessly focusing on tone to steer the conversation away from the topic at hand.
And language is not innocuous. It is used in very particular ways to enforce social norms, to categorize people and put them “in their place,” to put them down, to wield power over them, etc. Examining how language is used to hurt is part of social justice.
If you don’t like that, you might want to spend your time elsewhere, because that part of it will never go away on this blog.
Nthing the comments about Ally’s blog. I’d stop by and read his articles sometimes, and he’d generally have interesting and nuanced things to say.
But there was this strange space in what he said… or what he didn’t say. Just the ‘two sides, valid arguments’ construction… it rubbed me the wrong way. I thought about trying to engage with it…
But the comments, dear god, the comments…
I’ve always found it amusing that, in French, the C-word can only be used to describe men because the word itself is a male-gendered noun.
As for the posters, it doesn’t matter where the quotes came from, if you look hard enough on the internet you can find anyone spouting any kind of nonsense (leaving out the issue of quotes taken out of context, or the quote about the wage gap that is inoffensive.)
Well, THAT was an impressive double-down.
Felisha: your concern has been duly noted.
I’m 99% sure we have.
Yes, yes, we have had this convo before, and not all that long ago:
http://manboobz.com/2014/01/19/when-you-assume-a-nice-guy-launches-a-pre-emptive-strike/comment-page-1/#comments
I knew I was having a deja vu!
Also, sirtoot is the one who turned this into a long, needless conversation. Zie used a gendered slur, was asked very politely by one commenter to stop, and then zie decided to go on a very long and extended lecture about why it’s totally okay to use the word. If zie had simply dropped it at the first request and moved on, the entire exchange would have been much shorter and simpler.
Did I use zie correctly? I’m new to it.
May I propose we add “cretin” to our list of ableist words, please? It has cropped up the odd time here and has a similar medical history.
I had no idea about the history of that word, titianblue. It’s sad how many slurs are connected to medical issues. I don’t generally use it anyway but will stop completely now. My go-to insult has shifted toward the “asshole” or “asshat” genre.
Blimey, no wonder my ears have been burning all day, Hello Manboobzers
Anyway if I end up having to moderate twice as much sirtoot now that you’ve banned him David, I’ll start sending my commenters over here in a retaliatory action. You have been warned.
I don’t think we’re fighting. We’re clarifying what is and is not acceptable in this community and why. I’s sometimes a pain to have to do it again and again but it’s not unimportant. You might go google “micro-aggressions” if you think it is.
And part of the ridiculous fun of Manboobz for me is how we wander off all over the place from cats to recipes to bra-shopping inbetween the mocking of the misogyny.
SO relieved to see I’m not the only person tired of Ally Fogg’s moderating (and, to a large extent, posting. No, dude, misandry’s not a thing the way misogyny is.)
The final straws for me were a) he continues to reinforce the stupid “I’m an equalist, not a feminist”…. thing, which just perpetuates the demonisation of the word “feminist” and b) the whole don’t judge MRAs in general and only judge individual MRAs for that which you have a citation. That’s akin to “don’t judge anti-vaxxers”. They’re wrong. They’re terrible. They’re terrible people. The entire basis of their identity is wrong. Everything about them is wrong. You’re banned if you say anything negative about MRAs in general though.
His blog, his rules, my choice not to partake.
We could do with some decent chew toys, @Ally. the recent crop of trolls has been sadly lacking.
They have been a lazy bunch, haven’t they?
titianblue: they’d certainly get told here in a way they don’t there.
That “equalist” garbage makes my ass itch.
How can one simultaneously indignantly shriek “I’M NOT A FEMINIST, DON’T CALL ME A FEMINIST” without demonising feminism? You just can’t, brah.
Okay, I’m not even a native speaker, but I can still follow an argument. “Gendered slur” doesn’t mean “can’t be used to insult all genders”. It means the word is originally associated with a particular gender in a negative way. Also, nobody claims that when you call someone a twat, you literally claim that zie is a huge walking talking vagina. The claim is merely that “twat” wouldn’t mean “bad person” unless vaginas were considered bad, and it’s no coincidence that it’s the name of this particular bodypart and not, say, “kneecap” or “eyebrow” that doubles as an insult. NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.
Hmm. Well I spent some time looking at your blog today, Ally Fogg, and it was enough to show me that I would never want to hang out in your comments section. But I do hope you send some trolls our way.
This is the silliest thing I have read all morning.
I started off this blog trying to be as hands-off a moderator as possible — free speech and all — and went a long time without banning more than a tiny handful of people. But it just doesn’t work. Trolls are not only abusive, but they’re constantly derailing the discussion to whatever their pet issue is that day. Trolls: you’re here for our entertainment. Be entertaining!
These debates over language are also getting a bit tedious. Felicia, I understand your frustration at being taken to task for what is a borderline case in terms of problematic words. But at this point I don’t think it does anyone any good to keep that discussion going.
I think the rule is going to have to be the punch bowl rule: if a bunch of people here ask you to stop using a particular word (get out of the punch bowl), just stop using the word and move on. (You can use the word elsewhere to you heart’s content.) The flip side of that is that is that if the person using the word moves on, eveyone else should move on as well.
I think I’ll add some notes on this to the comments policy.
Ugh, it’s just like when I used to argue with friends about “gay”.
“I don’t mean ‘gay’ as in ‘homosexual’, I mean ‘gay’ as in ‘bad'”
“Yes, but WHY does ‘gay’ mean ‘bad’?”
“…oh”
Except toot hasn’t managed the “oh” part yet. Nor are they getting the irony of having this particular wank on a post about the “C” word.
As for the OP: doesn’t “don’t be that feminist” imply that there’s a kind of feminist they would be OK with? I know, MRAs, so they probably didn’t think this through and are just spinning off an earlier meme that no one but them will even be familiar with, but still.
Sorry, I read this sentence out of order and fixated on “venom cunt”, probably because my brain was already primed by the Venom Cock wank. (sidenote: I actually found a used copy of Touched By Venom recently. I’m saving it for my next beach/lake trip)
USican here: It depends on who you ask. While the vast majority of us associate “retard” with a developmental disability, it’s not common knowledge (at least in my region of the country) that “spaz” refers to symptoms of (or a person with) cerebral palsy. I didn’t even know it did until a couple of years ago, and that’s thanks to social justice discussions. It’s therefore quite likely that the people you asked had not encountered anyone who found the word objectionable.
Ooh, moderated. Was it the “c” word? I saw someone else use it un-starred, so I did, too. Sorry for making more work for you, David.
Misogyny, such as using slang terms for female genitals in a derogatory manner?
Look, I thought the “p-word” joke was funny, and I’ve made similar jokes before, in the right company. But since people here reacted so badly to it, I wouldn’t make that kind of joke here.
I say “Jesus Christ!” as an expletive all the time. I have a coworker who objects to this on the grounds that it’s blasphemous. I’m bot Christian and I don’t believe blasphemy is a thing, but I don’t say it when she’s working.
I don’t understand why not being an asshole on purpose is so much to ask.
I honestly can’t tell if this is a joke or a threat.