Meet Sasha. Sasha is an angry young man living in England (allegedly), with a super-HAWT girlfriend (allegedly), and a lot of opinions about feminism (not-so-allegedly). The other day, he decided to share some of these opinions with the world. Or at least with any of those feminists who happened to be reading the Men’s Rights subreddit at the time.
In a topic devoted to a conference on “lad culture” in British universities, Sasha lashed out at feminists for what he sees as their hypocritical attack on boorish, sexist “lads.” Hypocritical, you see, because these very same women allegedly have sex with posh men all the bloody time:
You don’t like ‘lad culture’? My dear, I don’t give a fuck what you do and don’t like. … The hypocrisy is staggering – you’ll be dropping your knickers in a flash if a dashing Etonian invited you to the Bullingdon, but God forbid some working class fella gets a bit tipsy and sings a rugby song.
Naturally, he dismissed women’s accounts of harassment as stuff and nonsense:
You’ve been threatened with rape by fellow students ‘to loosen you up’? have you fuck, you lying toe tag. If you’re going to make shit up try to make it less fantastical why don’t you.
So in short my dear, fuck you and fuck the high horse you rode in on.
In a series of followup comments so angry that some of them were actually downvoted to zero by the Men’s Rights crowd — I know, right! — Sasha pranced about on his own high horse spewing misogynistic nonsense. First, he demanded that feminists take on the very serious gold-digging whore problem:
[A]re women inclined to be gold-digging whores? Unfortunately, there’s a good case for saying you are. I wouldn’t paint all of you with such a broad brush, but let’s put it simply: feminists – you’ve got to own this shit. There are many, many negative aspects of femininity, and you’ve got enough shit of your own to address before you start pointing fingers at anyone else.
Then he proclaimed feminists to be the equivalent of the racist English Defense League and the Klan.
You’re a bigot. You don’t understand that you’re a bigot, because like the EDL or the KKK you think that your status as a ‘persecuted group’ gives you the right to behave as vilely as possible. However be in no doubt as the depth of my utter disgust for you as a human being and for your ideology.
Oh, we be in no doubt.
You are a supporter of an ideology of hate. You are a feminist. You are, by definition, a fascistic narcissist who trades in lies, deceit and hatred. I will fight you until my dying breath and society would be better without you. That clear enough?
When a female Redditor pointed out that she herself had been catcalled on campus, he pulled out his trump card: his EX-MODEL GIRLFRIEND.
OK, well how do you explain the fact that my partner, who is an attractive 20-something American former fashion model attending a Northern English university, says that she has never, not once, ever, heard a single catcalling insult or ever felt threatened in any way whatsoever on her campus, or anywhere in the UK?
I faxed this comment of his to my fax girlfriend Kate Winslet, and she faxed back a message about what a lying loser she thought he was. Then we fax made out for a while until we ran out of toner.
Anyway, then Sasha yelled at his main critic for a bit:
You’re not a decent human being, you’re a feminist. You’re as vile and reprehensible as other bigots like the cunts in the Westborough Baptist Church, or Golden Dawn or the EDL or the KKK. Fuck you, fuck the family that raised you in such a cloud of ignorance and hatred, and fuck everything you stand for.
As for ‘helping men’, disparaging bigoted cunts like you is a key part of it.
Yes, that’s right. He called someone a “bigoted cunt,” without the slightest bit of self-awareness.
Then he took it a bit too far:
By the way, do you like cats? I know most feminists do. I like cats too. I’ll bet your cat thinks you’re a bigoted cunt as well.
Dude. Don’t EVEN go there.
NOTE: Thanks to Cloudiah and the AgainstMensRights subreddit for pointing me to Sasha’s oeuvre.
And a fridge or freezer for storing all those meals you are supposed to put together so that you can just reheat during the week. In some housing markets, it is not at all uncommon that the landlord isn’t required to provide a fridge.
Oh, and by the way, if you have some spare cash, please go buy a bunch of travel sized soaps (both dish and body), laundry detergent, shampoos and conditioners and drop them off at your local food pantry or homeless shelter. Because you can actually get enough food in a variety of different places and it will be a constant, soul-wounding struggle, but you can manage. But this
is true and one of the most difficult things about trying to keep up the appearance of being a totally normal “productive member of society” while trying to dig yourself out of being super poor.
fromafar2013, dogs yes if you are very vigilant and very careful (they are omnivores like us) but cats no. Cats are obligate carnivores and will get extremely sick on a vegan or vegetarian diet. Funny thing, they evolved eating the whole of small animals (birds, mice, etc) so they need the organs too. I knew several people with cats when I lived in California who couldn’t understand that they needed to include organs and even very finely ground up bones if they were gonna make cat food at home.
@ gillyrosebee
“…one of the most difficult things about trying to keep up the appearance of being a totally normal “productive member of society” while trying to dig yourself out of being super poor.”
So true. When I was unemployed I’d go days without eating much, but I never let myself run out of shampoo or toothpaste. When looking for work it doesn’t matter how well fed you are, it matters what you look like. It sucks.
gillyrosebee,
At my work they have a permanent donation box for soaps, shampoos etc. that people get while traveling for that exact reason.
I’ll try to remember to pick some up next time I’m at target.
Another problem is “interview-quality” clothes. When my mom worked for a job training program, they had a clothes closet full of professional clothes.
@ gillyrosebee
Yeah, I’ve never done the veggie cat thing. I think there would be a revolt and I’d wake up to my cats eating my toes… or like one night I skipped the wet food and woke up with the tail half of a mouse on the pillow next to me. “No wet food? That’s okay, I found this to eat instead! Oh, hey. You want the other half? I’ll just leave this…here.”
Speaking a s a person who is from the socio-economic background in question, that’s right!
You cannot buy anything that’s not food with SNAP benefits. But you can trade them for cash if you get a lot of them. Now the people I know who do this are not spending the benefits on liquor, and cigarettes. (Most poor people don’t smoke, because cigarettes cost money and liquor is considered a treat. )They are using the cash to buy the things you can’t get using only the benefits, like putting gas in the 15 -25 year old “Cadillac” that their brother keeps in good shape, that they bought second hand ten years ago, so they can get to work, or on soap or diapers.
When I see people trotting out their version f the Welfare Queen myth it seriously makes me want to enact some form of violence on them (like a sharp smack). Often such people are speaking from the very depths of their over-privileged ignorance.
“We” don’t have any Whole Foods stores here in this neighborhood. There is no Trader Joe’s to walk to, no organic farmers nearby and I know from personal experience that fresh food cost more money than junk food. When you’re poor, you try to stretch what money you get as long as you can and processed food is exceptionally cheap and much easier to get then organically grown -whatever. When you are poor and work any job and have kids you do not have time to cook elaborate (or heck,even simple) meals for your kids. (You heat up some Chef Boyardee so you can get the kids to bed on time for school tomorrow. )You just don’t have that time! I can’t stress this enough..
I’ve lived this and witnessed this my entire life and over-privileged no-nothings with their nannies and SAH lifestyle, who get up on their righteous high horse about what poor people should be doing with their money and or food need to STFU!
Sorry about the rant but that topic seriously ticks me off.
The latest right wing food stamp meme is that SNAP recipient are selling their cards on Craigslist and presumably using the money for liquor and drugs. They never provide any evidence this is happening. I’m guessing one person saw it one time and emailed his right wing buddies about it and from there it became one of those conservative urban legends they like to brainlessly repeat ad nauseam.
When I lived in LA, I did some volunteering with a group that is now (sadly) defunct. We’d go all over the county to folks with fruit bushes or trees and do free pruning, shaping, etc. and in exchange we get to harvest and keep all the fruit, which got delivered to food pantries and homeless shelters. We’d do collections from farmer’s markets as well. It was a great experience.
One of my friends and co-participants was trying to get together the backing for a meal delivery service (there are tons of them where you call up and order and get gourmet meals for a week, including desserts and snacks, delivered to your door) where you could use your WIC or SNAP benefits to order a full week of healthy meals all prepared for you so that all you had to do was heat and serve, or if you wanted you could choose meals that didn’t need heating. He kept bouncing off the wall that forbids using those benefits from paying for prepared foods, and the argument that if they let him have a waiver, you’d get recipients wanting to go to Wendy’s (literally, they were obsessed with the possibility of people going to Wendy’s) to buy fast food.
I heard that there is a local group that goes to farmer’s markets and is allowed to accept WIC and SNAP and give people tokens they can use to buy from the farmers. You can even give them a donation to enable folks to get matching funds (to help offset the higher cost of farmer’s market goods).
Haven’t finished reading the comments yet, but I have to chime in with my everlasting undying devotion to mochi ice cream. That is all.
@fromafar2013, I spoke quickly without including any nuance. I certainly didn’t mean to criticize you for taking care of your dog’s specific dietary needs! Sorry for that.
@ Viscaria
No worries! I figured it wasn’t meant as anything bad! I feel the same way about people feeding their dogs chocolate or beer because ‘They never got sick from it and they like it!’ -_-;
@falconer a full size Lego house has already been built.
http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/James_May
“The finished house consisted of more than 3.5 million bricks and included two floors, full plumbing and lighting, and LEGO chairs, coffee tables, bathroom fittings, kitchen utensils, and a cat, named Fusker after May’s own cat. ”
Because no house is complete without a cat! All hail the Furrinati!
Not in support of the original guy AT ALL, but if a feminist wants to make a poster mocking a MRA, she should at least “try” to get her grammar right. Your is not the same as “you’re.” When I first saw the poster, I thought that must have been the way the original guy said it. No one mocking someone would be so careless. But I was wrong.
Yeah, they have said we might get another heat wave in March, and the temps are bouncing around at the moment (22 today, 31 by Tuesday, 22 again Wednesday). But the end of February is always something I look forward to.
On the not-being-allowed-to-enjoy-stuff-if-you’re-not-rich topic: there was a survey in the paper the other day saying that more Australians would pay for a holiday than put the money toward retirement. I didn’t read the whole thing because it sounded so fucking stupid. The assumption that the cash for a holiday would make a whole lot of difference to your retirement, for one thing, and that everyone’s got enough money to put away in the first place, was ridiculous, especially given it’s estimated you need something like a million to be a self-funded retiree.
Yeah, I’ve had holidays – overseas, the horror! My super is never going to be enough to live on, and never would have been, because I’ve always been in lowish-paid clerical work. I’ve always known I’d need the pension.
It almost read like someone choosing to have experiences and memories is Not Allowed.
Please, don’t even think of it. Cats need meat to get taurine. They can’t produce it themselves. Vegetarian diet for cats means sending them blind.
titianblue, is Maisie okay? I haven’t checked the open thread yet.
Tarine, taurine, taurine, tauuuuuuuuu-ri-i-ine
I’m begging of you please, cat’s a beef man
Tarine, taurine, taurine, tauuuuuuuuu-ri-i-ine
Please don’t feed veges only because you can
Well played, Kiwi Girl.
Aw, now I’m going to have Jolene stuck in my head all day…
…Which is FANTASTIC. Awesome parody song choice A++ made my day.
Random food related note: I read recently that an all raw food diet results in weight loss. This is because cooking food makes more of the nutrients available for digestion. That’s why our distant ancestors did it. For most humans for most of all history (and prehistory), losing weight was a bad thing. Not to get all Michael Pollan, but some first world people have some deeply shallow beliefs about what they eat. I’ve read historical nutrition works from the XIXth century CE seriously advising that ‘non-nutritive’ fiber be eliminated from the diet, as it serves no alimentary purpose. Some of today’s ideas will seem as bizarre in a century’s time, if anyone is still around to read them.
Good point, “confused” isn’t adequate shorthand for “amazingly impervious to facts, or plain disingenuous”, and lets a massive pile of hate off the hook.
I didn’t check who I was following up. I’ll try to spread my nitpicking more evenly in future.
@Kittehs, no news on Maisie, I’m afraid. All my neighbours are being really kind, the local shops have put up my posters & the local letting agent went over to the empty house opposite in her lunch hour to check Maisie wasn’t there. All the local animal charities & vets have her details and the council will call me if she’s reported to them. So trying to take comfort from having done everything possible.
I just want to point out that while cats are obligate predators, dogs can thrive on a plant based diet as well as people can. When we were living veggie my dogs ate a kibble made with veg proteins and ate everything from beans and oatmeal to carrots and raw pumpkin. I didn’t intend for them to eat a raw pumpkin. They got hold of a jack-o-lantern and ate it with gusto before I could stop them.
I’ve tried a variety if diets for a variety of rescued critters over the years. Dogs are happy to eat just about anything.
Kittehs: Our Legolas does that same thing with the food dish. I have to go into the kitchen, pass my toes over the food so it fills the gap, and then pull my foot back, and he goes back to happily eating. I tend to mockingly call him our ‘Mighty Hunter’, because he also can’t seem to locate the dish when the light in the kitchen is off, so will come and cry to have it turned on.
LOL that’s timely: I was wondering last night what to call an animal who’s neither diurnal nor nocturnal. Our cats manage to sleep at least 23/7.