I had an interesting conversation recently with a woman on Twitter who told me that my policy of letting MRAs and misogynists comment here, at least so long as they’re not abusive, was keeping her and others she knew from joining in the conversation; she wanted a place to discuss MRAs where she didn’t have to deal with them.
I know a lot of the regulars here like engaging with the trolls and MRAs who stop by, but I’d like to create some space here for commenters who want to discuss the issues in a Troll- and MRA-free zone.
So I thought I’d try starting a new kind of Open Thread: A No-Troll, No-MRA, No-Misogynist, No-Rape-Apologist, No-Douchebag Thread to discuss the issues I cover on the blog and anything related to that: Misogyny, MRAs, PUAs, MGTOW, the “Red Pill,” and so on. Enjoy!
Oh, and if a troll wanders in, or if someone starts being douchey, ignore them and send me a note. I’ll delete their comments and ban them. No warning, no moderation, straight ban.
Well, don’t really have any of those thread things, except the station’s herb garden that I’m trying desperately not to kill.
The thyme is doing splendid, but the mint’s just about had it.
Katz, love the fixer/feeder idea. I’ m not a feeder, but I have awful fixer leanings. Must fix all things! Ah!
Been working on reining it in since high school, by shoving the must fix things into suitable tasks of fixing and learning to keep my yap shut while people are doing the problem dump.
Fixers are so annoying. Trying not to be a fixer is tough. You have interesting things happening!
I spun up 4 oz of a lovely blue/red varigated roving. Most I’ve ever done in one day. So I have five skeins of yarn on the stick (waiting to be boiled) or will when I get the bulky flyer out and ply that one up. I can spin up 2 oz of a heather and then I’ll have six. I’ve got another half done skein, but that’s some cranky alpaca silk.
I’m almost treading water on the monthly increase in the fiber stash (about 12 oz. a month), since I’ve put 12 oz on the stick in the past week. That means I only have about 16 lbs of roving to spin.
Auntie, I liked your link. Good article.
” The 8 Biggest Lies Men’s Rights Activists Spread About Women
http://www.policymic.com/articles/90131/8-biggest-lies-men-s-rights-activists-spread-about-women ”
Except, toward the end, this was kind of – ugh:
” To be clear, rape is usually not violent. ”
The writer clearly had a lapse of judgment there. All rape is violent. Inherently.
OK, back to scrolling, past *more stuff I never said and people who never read the blog post:*
” for Non-Personal Stuff ”
” to discuss the issues I cover on the blog and anything related to that: Misogyny, MRAs, PUAs, MGTOW, the “Red Pill,” and so on “
Whine, whine, whine. David also stated this is an experiment. Given we’ll talk about whatever we damnwell feel like on this blog, in any thread, and you should be familiar with that from your time here, you’re just showing your arse more every time you make this petty complaint. Grow up, ferchrissakes.
They must be really fun at parties.
I can just imagine. ::shudder::
Tea for Two, I clearly commandeered the thread. I even used a megaphone. Don’t you know that you have to do whatever someone says if they use a megaphone?
News before Tea for Two fills the page with another series of thousand-word posts: I got a partial request from an agent. (This is basically just getting moved to a shorter reject pile but it’s still exciting.)
I am katz’s dancing sock puppet, katz makes me dance, dance.
Whee, katz! Exciting indeed!
Let’s see, other comandeered topics wot upset the SeriusFemnist:
I took Mads out for a walk in the back yard today, first time she’s been out there in a long while (taking her out means her being on a leash; I’d never be able to catch her if she dashed up a tree or over the fence). Went fine for about fifteen minutes, she was pottering around, sniffing things, eating grass, until someone several houses away started some sort of machinery, and Miss Instantly Fuzzy Tail took off at a gallop for the back door, with me in tow.
She has since slept off her terrible fright. Or is in the process of doing so, anyway. We know how long it takes kitties to recover from these things.
I had some clear memories of Home the last couple of days: first time since I finished work. They were only fragments of our day, very clear, but all I can say is they were of the TMI variety. 😉
katz: My sister in law is an agent, looking for clients. Shall I put the two of you in touch?
I had a wonderful discussion of personal autonomy with my six-year-old son the other day. We were watching The Nightmare Before Christmas and he asked why Dr. Finkelstein kept getting mad when Sally ran away. I told him that since he made Sally he felt like he owned her. His response was “but she’s a person and owns her own self!”
I’m a proud momma!
Proud momma indeed!
::applause for amybethwp’s son::
An acquaintance’s 4 year old daughter picked up the phrase “my body, my choice” somewhere and started using it. Smart kid to join the pro-choice movement at such an early age!
Really she just coopted it to attempt to get out of obeying mom but I think it’s a good sign the kernel of the idea is there already.
General question: anyone here done medical reception work? I’m thinking of doing a training course to look for work in that field, preferably not in general practice. Any thoughts/advice?
Not medical reception EXACTLY, Kittehs, but Mac and I worked as a general-purpose paper monkey at a durable medical equipment facility. (AKA: orthopedic shoes for diabetics, athletes, Hansenites, etc.) We did a fair bit of various customer service, medical billing, phone, and health insurance fights. Not quite sure if that’s what you’re looking for though, since we weren’t in an actual doctor’s office.
::joins applause for amybethwp’s son::
*Cheers for WWTH’s daughter too*
The taunts don’t upset me.
Just keep proving my point.
Yep, super fun at parties.
I am not sorry to have missed the grossness that seems to have gone down the past couple days. Also:
Which to me, means, not an endless kaffee klatsch about ourselves. Such as, trading recipes, trading knitting patterns, or diverting blog traffic to publicize one’s book.
*snort* Selling writeathons and commishes on Mammoth kept me in toothpaste and deodorant during the Homeless Year. So far, I think if folks found me an unsufferable self-promoters, they’d damn well tell me to shut up.
Instead, they tell me what they want to read, so I can write it for them. 😀
Tea For Two is just trolling at this point.
Hey, genius: you come to a mockery blog and start being an asshole, you’re going to get mocked, however much you pretend you’re the bestest reallest feminist and all the rest of us aren’t. Assholes be assholes and you don’t get an exemption.
If it’s so dreadful here, why are you staying? Are we the only feminist site on the whole internet?
Oh, I thought they wanted a Hall Monitors badge.
@Tea for Two:
Look, for crying out loud with the vibrant echoing words of a thousand sonar pulses, if you have a topic you wish to talk about – talk about it. Bring it up. Go: “Hey, this is a thing I want to ask about, here’s my so-so, what’s yours?”
At this point you have literally spent more time complaining about other people being off-topic than bringing anything to the topic at hand! That is, for lack of a better word, sort of odd.
Personal stuff is personal stuff, like, oh my god my hair is on fire and my face is full of bees because I slipped and fell into a bee-hive, what do I do?! or possibly my family is doing this thing, are they being abusive? How do I know, what can I do?. Non-personal stuff is: “Hey, I have this book with this thing, and maybe writing about sex workers in a stereotypical way is something I can avoid – how do I do it?”
or possibly “Y’know, it occurs to me that a lot of represenation of female sex workers in movies follows remarkably predictable patterns and sees the sex worker from a fetisizhed outside perspective where she is either some hyper-sexual wonder-gal or a broken doll in need of saving from all those other men’s cruel penises (naturally so she can get with the right one) – is that just odd, and does anyone know any movies where that isn’t the case?”,
or, I don’t fucking know, link to something and go on about it and it what it means to you and chat a bit about that particular thing.
What kind of person goes into a place, takes a look at it, and then starts disparaging the on-going culture without participating in it, constantly slips in snide insinuations of that culture’s complete lack of Real Good Thought Thinking (“coffee-klatch?” Give me a fucking break) without even really participating or doing anything but defending yourself?
Your first fucking comment was made in remarkably poor wording and I have to confess, somewhat poor taste to me, and this was pointed out, and instead of then going “All-right, I can see how you read it that way, but what I actually meant was this” you go “WEll if that’s what you think, just read harder, and also, why are you all being such phelbian philistines as to discuss BOOKS and COFFEE and RECIPES? For-sure, that is a terrible thing that is not in keeping with the stated purpose of this thread! You are polluting this blog with your antics! You are being mean and corrective and LEA is WRONG for having her opinion!”
Look, god-dammit, if we were, and that was the case, and we were not allowed or, or desired to, talk about Katz probably-awesome book ,or pecuniums wedding or Argenti’s fish or Kittehserfs relationship with a king or LBT’s writing or Falconer’s children or Fibinachi’s constant, grating attempts at writing bad poetry or the exact way to make fissible materials be spontaously stable at exceeding high temperatures to create fusion based power or exactly what constitutes quilt-weave or the naturalization of Australian by foreign invasive species, I am very sure that the blog owner would say:
“Look, people. Don’t. Be quiet now”
which David does and has on so many occassions where it was appropriate to the situation at hand.
Either bring something to the table that you are interested in tallking about and feel makes a good conversational opening for this thread about non personal issues as they relate to manosphere, or, for crying out loud, go somewhere else and have your fun
I bid you good-day, SIr or Madame. GOOD DAY.
+1 internets to Fibinachi for appropriate use of “literally”.
+a second internets to Fibinachi just generally.
“Fibinachi’s constant,
gratingbrilliantattemptssuccessatin writingbadhilarious poetry”FTFY
RE: Fibinachi
Aw, but that might mean Tea For Two would have to stop sulking, and then they can’t be the center of attention anymore!
Seriously, well-said. I’m a writer, but I WISH I could express myself as well as you.
Ok, so this is non-personal kinda, and something I am thrilled about and had to share…
My province just elected the first woman as Premier!! She also happens to be openly gay!! I imagine the MRA contingent in my neck of the woods is… well, less than happy. Perhaps they will move in order to avoid the disaster I am sure they are sure is coming.
I really needed something to restore my faith in humanity, and this helped.
Wait. I apologize. That was NOT your first (“fucking”) comment – it was your third.
The first two were actually recieved with both friendly demeanour and polite feedback. As they should, they were well written and interesting.
Lex-man even tried to continue having a conversation with you about harassment and the stuff that happens in different communities, but you decided to grab your ball and go on with it to play a different game.
Look, Lea just asked you to be respectful of sex workers and you tagged that as “An uproar” and a backlash.
Here:
Said Lea:
Uproar?
Backlash?
Said Katz:
said Tea for Two:
Uproar? Backlash? Reaction?
Literally the only one of that I could find (have I gone blind?) was Lea – who, just, well, said: You know, we have people here who are sex workers and what you said can be construed to be pretty disrespectful to them. Maybe not do that, yeah?
Said Tea for Two:
The only two persons who respended directly to you was Lea – Katz just clarified her book not being a movie. That’s certainly “quoted as saying” and “Stuffed full of straw”. That… one person responding.
Your reponse though, to that? Those two responses?
Holy smoly martyr guacamole Batman! Why can’t you all see, you could all find, entire topic derail, last thing I expected was arguments, I tend to idealize promises of safe havens, honest expression…. no criticism… no backlash…
Woah.
Sorry, all that from: “Not all sex workers are trafficked and not all sex workers find their work traumatic or something they need to be rescued from.”
Really?
Very detailed study of sex workers in film, which is interesting – although I don’t see what the point was, and then you were already back to
Which is just mind-boggling.
Look:
But you did.
And people reacted to that.
“And the idea that a prostitute shouldn’t have any hint of emotional damage from the […]”
“I didn’t say all sex workers are damaged”.
Yes. That’s what that sentence means. You did, ipso fucking facto, say that. Perhaps without meaning to, but you have, so there it is, so here I am, at 5 in the morning because I can’t sleep, going through it.
No, what you got back was responses to your sometimes problematic phrasing. That was it. Responses that you then decided were an “uproar” and a “backlash” and a “argument”.
And people even apologized for getting you somewhat wrong and for being harsh! Katz and kittehserf both did that! What is going on here?
And pretending that calling this an MRA forum, that we give backlash, that there is an uproar, that this is not a properly safe space, that we are being mean, that this is a clique, that people are mis-representing you or ignoring you is somehow not making personal attacks is just odd too, because it clearly is, you just eschewed the second person pronoun and skipped straight to the minor personal insults.
I mean, goddamn – Katz was nice to a fault. And yet:
Seriously?
Fucking seriously?
I quote Lea again:
Soapbox? Soapbox?!
And finally:
Woah.
I… I mean, wow.
Look, I’m a writer too, at least occassionally when I can stop hating myself, and other people pitching in and bouncing off ideas are the greatest fun I have with writing. Seeing how others see things is one of the wonders of the world, to me, personally, and when someone asks a question about something it’s a wonderful chance to think about something that might be interesting or fun or cool or amusing.
You don’t need to care that a dwarven civilzation lives near the ancient husk of an actual god encased in a fragment of a Creation, but if I ask you how infinite flowing water would impact your desert society I’d at least expect an answer because it’s a fascinating question.
That’s why there’s acknowledgement pages in books, you know.
I haven’t made any personal slams so far, but I will now – Tea for Two doesn’t seem interested in talking about anything or anyone but Tea for Two. Let me channel the MRA for a second:
Ahem
I hereby give notice of my withdrawal of my consent to the previous statement of wishing you to particpate in this conversation. I am no longer interested in that eventuality
Fibi: We’re just a bunch of bastard coated bastard people with bastard sauce on the side. And cliquey.
I got carried away.
Thanks guys, though! You are lovely and I appreciate it.
(Also LBT, what. what. whaaaaat. But you word so good-well! Fibi am poor insomniac. Him no good word use speak. Write infinitely much better plus good does the system)
———-
To get back on topic, here’s something I’ve been wondering about:
What is with the PUA’s and their odd duality?
What I mean is this – they’re people apparently dedicated to the art of suave. Yet, whenever they come here, there’s no humor, no grace, no wit, no charm, no art, nothing. They just seem… well sort of creepy, really.
What’s happening there? How come? The internet does not magically sap away charisma, so that can’t be it. If this is the response they get here, it has to be the response they get elsewhere too (if perhaps with less snark), so wouldn’t they quickly realize that they are not being very charming, suave or interesting… yet they don’t?
I don’t get it.
How can you persist in insisting that you are the most charming killer of ladies when people react to you with pitchforks, poetry and puns?
Beautifully! Well done 🙂
Ew, I didn’t even SEE that line:
I’m even puzzled why a writer is asking for others to pitch in.
Tea For Two, I’m a writer. I wrote forty-two stories last year and I sold over thirty of them. That’s pretty damn good. I ask my audience’s opinion because THEY PAY ME. I want to write what they want to read, because that’s what puts food on my table. This doesn’t mean I’m a bad writer. It means I fucking care about my audience, which any professional wants.
Also, writing doesn’t have to be a solitary pursuit. Admittedly, I take it to an extreme (almost all the writing I sell is SPECIFICALLY based on prompts given by my audience, and voting over which ones get illustrated and ebookified, and talking to my readers about what they want to see) but the whole Lone Artiste sitting alone and pouring out Their Soul without any input from anyone is only one way to be a writer. And frankly, it’s a relatively new invention. The majority of writers throughout history are like me, getting commissioned to write what the commissioner wants to read, thus the elaborate gushing praises in the dedication pages.
Now get off your high horse, I need the meat.
RE: Fibinachi
How can you persist in insisting that you are the most charming killer of ladies when people react to you with pitchforks, poetry and puns?
I’m going to rely on Old Spice Guy here and respond with, “Look at yourself, now look at me, now back at yourself, now back to me. Sadly, you aren’t me. But if you do Game, you can ACT like me. What’s in your hand? Back to me. It’s an HB10! What’s over there? Now back to me. The HB is now DIAMONDS!”
Not long ago someone, I think Lea, posted a video of a wannabe PUA. He recorded himself hitting on several women at a mall. He struck out every time and eventually got kicked out. All the women he hit on were very obviously uncomfortable and not the slightest bit interested. He still didn’t get it. He was still sure he had game. He required no evidence of his game working to think it was a strategy. People like that just have zero self awareness and zero awareness of others. They seem to have no capacity to listen or read body language and facial expressions.
I don’t even know how people get through life like that.
Wait! Unimaginative! I POSTED UR STORY! Still working on the bonus sketch.
Aw! That was LOVELY. In a weird, achey kind of way. I love the whistle language. Thank you 🙂
Tracy, yay for good news!
Oh no you don’t! We’ve already had David wanting to eat curried ponies!
I’m not into pouring out my soul either. It’s so hard to stuff back in.
Fibi, btw, has won ALL THE INTERNETS.
RE: Unimaginative
Thanks! It was actually really difficult trying to think of how to make the people different when our own species is so diverse. I finally settled on making it so different peoples took on different specialties; after all, they no longer only have themselves to worry about!
Also, the whistling is based off Silbo Gomero!
Cool! I’d heard there’s a whistling dialect in Greece (with only a couple hundred people fluent in it), but I didn’t know it was anywhere else.
Silbo gomero sounds fascinating! I’d never heard of such a thing.
I admit to having a morbid interest in seeing tea for two’s writing. Diva authors have I known, ones who take the slightest criticism as a more all insult, and what do you know, their finished products read like clumsy, unpromising first drafts because they would rather argue about why their artistic vision is brilliant than revise and improve. But tea for two has that special thing about malicious misinterpretation, so if a reader ever didn’t understand something, she would harangue them for misrepresenting her. So I bet her writing is completely incomprehensible.
@katz, there’s a not uncommon internet phenomenon in which a published author comes across a review that is not gushingly approving (like, maybe a 3-star) and goes on a freaking tear about being BULLIED by the reviewer. Who is clearly illiterate, biased, and unprofessional, and should be eaten by dogs. It’s bizarre, and oddly hypnotic.
A review of that author’s book, I mean. Not any 3-star review.
Unimaginative, OMG, that’s Fanstory all over. What memories that brings back. XD
Neodymium: Assuming she does novels, then yes yes yes. What agency is she with?
…Pecunium.
My autocorrect corrects the word “autocorrect” to”incorrect.” It knows itself well.
That’s bizarre even for autocorrect!
D’you think autocorrect is realted to the blockquote mammoth?
Did you say you’re in Brisbane wewereemergencies? Did you know I do pet photography? Proof -> https://www.flickr.com/photos/kimmau/sets/72157637791967944/ 🙂
If you are in Brisbane, I could try taking some pics of your birds, if you were interested. It would be fun to try anyway, and to meet a fellow mammotheer.
OMG, Kim, your photos are superb!
Katz: I’ll ping you in e-mail.
Kim, your photos are great! Given I’m a broke uni student, (living at home) I probably wouldn’t get photos anytime soon though 🙁 However, if you want to meet up at some point I’d be up for it! Where do you live?
Kittehs guess what! You know how I was having difficulty writing that essay last week? I just went back to edit it and it actually makes sense! I am shocked and incredibly pleased because now I can focus on my other assignment… Actually that isn’t that great, but oh well. Small miracles.
Wheeee! Well done, wewereemergencies. Our writing usually isn’t as sucky as we think at first. 😀
I was thinking similarly about Kim’s gorgeous photos – “Hmm, now if only sister and BiL weren’t on the dole/pension, they could go down to Brisbane and get some awesome photos of Laddie and Pepe.”
Buggrit!