Let’s say that you’re the “Managing Editor” of a website known far and wide for calling women “whores,” as well as an assortment of other 4- and 5-letter words generally considered crude sexist slurs. Let’s just say that you had a convention, and that during this convention your official spokeswoman went on a bit of a name calling rampage on Twitter, repeatedly attacking a woman who had tried to report on said convention as an “attention whore,” a “fame whore,” and a “little whore,” and offering similar “whore”-based assessments to other critics of the site.
And let’s just say that despite all this you also had a desire to convince the world that your site was not actually the misogynistic cesspit that it so obviously is. Would you:
1) Apologize for using the words “whore” and “bitch” and “c*nt” and other similar sexist epithets against women.
2) In your capacity as editor, quietly remove the word “whore” (and “bitch” and “c*nt”) from future postings on the site, and tell your PR maven to maybe come up with a less misogynistic insult of choice.
3) Start calling men whores so that no one can accuse you of hating women because, see we use “whore” to refer to men too!
The answer, of course, is 3 — at least if you’re Dean Esmay, “Managing Editor” of A Voice for Men. In a recent comment thread on AVFM, he declared:
![Screen Shot 2014-07-08 at Tue, [Jul 8], 14 5](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/screen-shot-2014-07-08-at-tue-jul-8-14-5.png?ssl=1)
CONFIDENTIAL TO D— E—-: No one is buying your bullshit. Also, if you want to try to convince the world that you’re a Friend of Sex Workers, you should probably stop using the word “whore” as an insult for women or men.
I always find these paternity fraud threads pretty upsetting. If there’s anyone else reading who does not hail from the (not even all that common anymore) “typical” dual biological parent household, and if these threads also make you feel hurt and devalued, please remember that your relationships with your parents are not any less meaningful, important or real just because you don’t share some genes. On the other side, if your parent (or your parent’s partner, or whatever you choose to call them) rejected you or treated you like you were lesser because you’re not biologically related to them, that was wrong of them, and it wasn’t your fault or anything you deserved.
@ sebhai
I can understand getting worked up with trolls, especially if you take something personally, but you have to be more careful about being offensive. There are real people behind these words on the screen. You said a lot of really problematic shit.
You seem new (I haven’t seen you around much, but I come and go, so eh), so I recommend lurking more. Learn more about not just broad feminist ideas, but intersectional ones too.
Read, read, and read some more. Not just here, other feminist blogs too.
Argh, hit post too soon!
I just wanted to say that with the ‘heat death of the universe’ thing, I’m not sure why this stood out as a red flag of mental illness (gag, the ableism…). First, I think we’ve all heard of hyperbole, and trolls using hyperbole to make their statements really ring. Second, this kind of thing is also a very common existentialist sort of thing, and even most of famous existentialists didn’t really believe it when they made that sort of grim pronouncement. Given that dudebro is a college kid, I wouldn’t be surprised that he’s just ‘discovered’ this kind of thinking along with his libertarian WTFery.
Really, the heat death sort of fit in with the rest of bittertroll’s absolute statements, and just make him one more misogynistic troll.
In any case, holding anti-social or irrational beliefs does not make one ‘crazy’.
High school, hopefully.
When did this thread explode?! And more importantly, have we had any entries for either Trolls Says the Darnedest Things or Misogyny Madlibs?
@Argenti
Bitter has some very hard to believe #thathappened stories, particularly about male feminists, and some wild TeRPer moments about alpha gods and betacide as well. He’s definitely deep into a headachy Mattel’s “My First Libertarian Ideas” phase, so I can’t get myself to go back and dig through his verbal dung however.
Yes, this thread has sucked eggs.
It has been personally insulting on a few levels and I feel a bit run down.
Luckily, my kids are playing with their new school supplies and my husband just held a zucchini over his head and yelled, “Zucchini!” in his best jawa impression. So, I’ll be cheerier soon.
Now he’s talking to the veggies going into the food processor life he’s a bond villain. Bless him.
@Puddleglum
I think that is right on point.
That is pretty much how I interpreted the “heat death of the universe” argument as well as the statements on the value of individuals, and selfishness as an ideal form of morality.
And the tiresome harping about negative rights.
That was pretty incredible to read… Can’t say I’ll be sad to see the back of BS troll but by gum if I don’t feel a bit sorry for his self-inflicted anguish and hatred against the world. That can’t be pleasant to live with.
Would this be the right time for me to ask about ableist language? I have been thinking about it a lot and I want to make sure I understand it so I don’t inadvertently be an asshole to someone. What is the go-to article for this?
@saphy: I don’t know about a go-to article for it, but wrt mental illness (my particular disability), we believe that terms like retard/ed, crazy, insane, and mental (e.g. as in “going mental”) should only be used by people with mental illness or disability who are reclaiming them, and terms like bipolar, manic, paranoid, psychotic, and delusional should be considered clinical terms only and never be used except in reference to a specific mentally ill person. More generally, as I said earlier, never diagnose someone as having a mental illness unless a) you are diagnosing yourself or b) you are a mental health professional who is providing treatment to that person.
There are similar rules wrt physical disabilities, but as I’m able-bodied, I shan’t try to cover them.
Bs did sound and awful lot like und, didn’t he?
They think selfishness and fatalism makes them wise. Though und didn’t seem to think that feminists were out to get him, he did suggest that he also thought he was unappreciated by women and that alpah/beta stuff was real. Both of them sounded very unhappy. The manosphere is doing harm to men too.
Saphy,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism
While I’m horribly confused by bs’s writing, I’m not willing to attribute it to the admittedly large and amorphous “mental illness” thing. Both being diagnosed with, and successfully treated for, depression didn’t seem to change the sorts or quantity of critiques my writing got at work, and the bane of my current existence is people, none of whom are mentally ill, who can write coherent sentences & paragraphs but can’t seem to assemble them into coherent reports.
You really start getting into dangerous territory when you start attributing muddled rhetoric and construction to muddled thinking.
Ah, so no, it doesn’t get any better than it was two pages ago. Great.
Lea — your husband sounds hilarious!
You have a good husband.
Ok, I’m feeling a little better now. I give credit where credit is due. Thank you to the people who stuck up for me. I’m honestly a little surprised that feminists would do that. I expected that there would be people who would shame me here, but didn’t expect that there would be some who would stick up for me. In my experience usually only MRAs stand up to sexual shaming. Usually feminists and alpha jocks or whatever you want to call them (thugs, gods, etc.) team up to do sexual shaming (just like they team up in the rest of the world to dominate the government).
Anyways, I looked up spermjacking and I’m not sure why you guys think it’s not real. Here’s advice from Cosmo magazine in which a woman talks about how she tricked her lover into having a child and drove him into exile : http://imgur.com/a/kKpwa . That’s at least one confirmed case. From my perspective, it’s basically rape because the male only consented to sex provided that the woman used birth control and then she deliberately didn’t use it. Therefore, he didn’t get to have informed consent to the sexual activity, meaning she raped him.
FWIW, I read bittersteel’s adieu as his version of John Galt’s radio address. He was laying out his bold vision, telling off the morally bankrupt masses, staking his place as a brave man in a corrupt world. It was a sad fucking mess that showed off all of his biases, but it probably made him feel smugly superior as he typed. Lil’ buddy needs to put down Atlas Shrugged and back away slowly.
What Puddleglum just wrote is probably the read deal, though 🙂 In any case, I don’t see how “terrible ideas and hyperbole” = mentally ill, either.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants – Now you’ve got me wondering if a Chocolate Frog could be my Patronus? I couldn’t eat him, but it would be fitting all the same.
I have an image of a David Attenborough documentary: “The frat-bros, and their natural allies, the Campus Feminists, are using the savanna’s tall grass to hide themselves as they stalk a herd of unaware betas.”
@bittersteel – Those Cosmo articles are horrible. No one should be tricked into having a child. I’m especially not keen on the “well, it all worked out in the end!” tone of two of the stories. Cosmo is pretty awful all together, though.
…
Okay, off to feed the family and walk the dog. Have a nice evening everyone!
…Cosmo really isn’t a feminist publication.
In fact, it’s kinda the opposite.
But anyway, bittersteel, since your back you still need to provide proof.
“But anyway, bittersteel, since your back you still need to provide proof.”
What do you want proof of? I don’t remember and I don’t want to read those comments again.
Flounce score: -2
@Zaimai: How would you describe this thinking?
The term you’re looking for is “Persecutory delusions”, and the exact distinction between that and the typical overblown rhetoric encouraged by the Internet is almost impossible to make.
And Bittersteel seriously needs to read up on some of the more affirmative existentialism.
AT MOORDITCH
“Now,” said the voice of lock and window-bar,
“You must confront things as they truly are.
Open your eyes at last, and see
The desolateness of reality.”
“Things have,” I said, “a pallid, empty look,
Like pictures in an unused coloring books.”
“Now that the scales have fallen from your eyes,”
Said the sad hallways, “you must recognize
How childishly your former sight
Salted the world with glory and delight.”
“This cannot be the world,” I said. “Nor will it,
Till the heart’s crayon spangle and fulfill it.”
– Richard Wilbur
Are we sure that Cosmo article is legit? I mean, if you blow up the images, you’ll find that the bottom left footer on one page gives a six digit phone number to call to subscribe. In the U.S., phone numbers (without area code) are seven digits. According to Wikipedia, Australian phone numbers (I mention this because the image also gives the magazine’s website as http://www.cosmopolitan.com.au) are ten digits long.
Sure, I’ll bite.
Here’s some claims you made which seriously require proof:
You’ve claimed that feminists advocate for this, and that all women everywhere do this.
Prove that feminists don’t actually care about trans women but are just in it for the money. Prove there is money and that that money is pouring into feminists coffers.
There are many others, but I think that’s enough for now.