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.
Ah, got it, emilygoddess.
Christ, I have a headache now.
Pell?
As someone who has spent way too much time in the presence of men who think there are no women around (because of me being a not-out trans woman), I can safely say that you’re full of shit. I know countless men who, in the ostensible absence of women, slut-shame the hell out of even the women they claim to love. Their own wives, daughters, and female friends. And yet when they think women are around, they act all polite and “gentlemanly”. Moreover, incentives are not the only reasons people judge others, and to say otherwise reflects a very poor understanding of how judgment functions in society. A man can be okay with slut-shaming a woman right in her face even if he wants to have sex with her.
Not to mention the fact that his articles actually contradict each other…
If the reason women call other women sluts has more to do with classism (and racism, btw) (as a method of enforcing purity culture) than with actual sexual promiscuity, then what possible effect could it have on actual sexual outcomes?
Hint: NONE
Bittersteel’s argument in a nutshell: “It’s wrong to pick on D.E. because somewhere in the world, someone else is doing same thing.”
My argument: “Fuck you. Dehumanizing people with words is wrong, no matter who is doing it. Words have power and individuals are responsible for their own words. People should be called to account for saying stupid/incoherent tripe and mocked for it.”
I hope that’s clear.
Also, stop using the word “feminist” like it represents one monolithic world view. it doesn’t. Sex positive feminists have generally tried to destigmatize sex trade workers since the 1980s and certainly don’t endorse slut-shaming behaviors.
You guys think that MRAs are guys who can’t get laid.
No, plenty of you guys get laid, and even fairly often. A few leading MRA figures are married. What you are are guys who are fucking obsessed with sex in a really unhealthy, misogynistic, and frankly gross way.
“You can tell Bitterlemons is not a woman and has never been street-hassled, can’t you?” I’m not sure what this discussion has to do with cat-calls or why feminists have an obsession with misdirecting every single conversation about male issues to a discussion of cat-calling. But for your information, I actually have been cat-called (yeah, I was pretty surprised too). About a week before finals (so I guess two months ago) I was getting pizza and when I walked back outside and saw a group of four extremely obese forty year old women doing something inappropriate (I’m not quite sure what exactly it was because I immediately looked away after seeing it out of the corner of my eye). Then I walked past them and I heard one of them say “he liked that” and then they started saying inappropriate stuff to me very loudly. That was pretty intimidating. If it had just been one person, I probably wouldn’t have been too bothered, but it was literally 5 people, all stronger than I am, all saying things to me very loudly on a street when I’m just trying to get back home so that I can study.
And I told a friend (male feminist, by the way) about it and he basically just said that I should have been flattered that someone finally took an interest in me. Ok, lol. If a woman had told him about it, he would have done his chivalric/white knighting nonsense and comforted her, but when I tried to talk about it to him, because I’m an unattractive male, it was somehow ok for them to do that.
This is exactly why I don’t like feminism.
And when I pointed that out, he just said that women have it worse/have to go through it every day. Ok, but why on earth does that mean that my experience wasn’t important and that I should have enjoyed it? I mean, not all women are cat-called. Here’s an example of a woman COMPLAINING because she hasn’t ever been cat-called: http://sjwstupidity.tumblr.com/post/59443384419/23claw-grapingfeminists-catcall-them-and
What the hell, Bittersweet. You have made several posts, but still failed to link to the supposed feminist calling women whores, or given any explanation for why he/she is now the voice of feminism.
Here’s what you do. Go to that comment, and then click your browser’s address bar. Press CTRL C on your keyboard. Now come back here and write a comment, and click CTRL V and that will link to the Uber-Feminist calling women prostitutes.
Your ability to change the subject is cute, I guess. Almost as cute as your ability to extrapolate into outerspaceland about why women might be more invested in policing the behavior of other women (even though, you even admit that men police eachother’s sexual behavior more than women. Gee, it’s almost as if people are more concerned with social aspects of their own genders than others). When you finish middle school and stop reading r/theRedpill, you’re going to learn that not only is “sex as a limited commodity” and inaccurate way to describe human sexual behavior, but it’s also an unhealthy way to live your own life.
Also, what world do you live in, where men throughout history have had no reason to control the sexuality of women? Where fathers have never slut shamed their daughters to “protect” them, or to maintain their value as future brides for other men? Where husbands have been granted legal ownership over their wives so as to control paternity, while they themselves are welcome to be as promiscuous as they please? Where female virginity is prized by male suitors, but male virginity is seen as unimportant? Where Paul Elam can say that women are whores who are “begging to be raped”, but you’ve definitely never heard an MRA slut shame. Where, right now, you can turn on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh and hear about how we can’t make businesses insure birth control because those “sluts” want to have all the sex? I don’t know, maybe in your world Rush Limbaugh is a woman.
Also, the “Most Esteemed Senator Anne Cools” can take her “traditional marriage” and hop back into the homophobic hole she crawled out of.
Oh, you. Never change.
So basically you’ve determined that it can be just as nasty for men to experience the things that are nasty for women to experience. That’s got to be the worst “gotcha” against feminism ever.
@bittersteel,I would like to nominate that little story of your for submission to /r/thathappened.
So it would have been OK if they were young and hot? That’s what you assholes are always saying when women complain about being harassed.
If this story actually happened, I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry your friend – who is both a shiitty friend and a shitty feminist – minimized it and tried to spin it as a compliment. And I’m sorry that even experiencing something that women regularly experience was not able to instill in you even a modicum of sympathy.
If men don’t have a problem with women having multiple partners, why is it that I’ve seen so many rants about the cock carousel?
Didn’t your mother ever tell you that two wrongs don’t make a right? Or is listening to your mother misandry?
Even though women who’ve internalized patriarchal values call women whores that doesn’t suddenly make it ok for men to do it.
As always, citation needed on feminists constantly insulting men on the basis of not getting laid. We do make fun of guys who think they’re oppressed because conventionally beautiful won’t fuck them. We do point out that nobody is entitled to sex. We don’t attack men willy nilly about his sex life though.
And I’m sorry for saying “even” so much and generally failing to proofread.
I think the kid’s a performance artist.
“Sometime, little boy, men call women who won’t give them the time of day “sluts.” If you had any women friends, you’d know this.”
I’ve never seen this. Ever. And I have plenty of female friends, and they’ve never once complained to me about being called a slut by a guy who’s interested in them. But maybe that’s because I don’t talk about their romantic lives with them because I honestly don’t care (not my problem, not my concern).
I have seen extreme bigotry on the part of female and male feminist friends, however. I obviously have different interactions with different friends. One friend that I was talking to about the 80/20 rule (because we’re both into evo psych) (and this girl goes to big-time feminist conferences like the UN Summit on Women!) suggested that straight guys who can’t get laid should turn gay. Like really? Gay men are just men who aren’t good enough for women? And you also think that homosexuality is a choice? Perfect example of feminist bigotry. She hates men so much that she thinks that any man who isn’t with a girl is inferior.
Another example: when I heard about the disgusting, objectifying app called LuLu, I was really frightened that someone would post bad things about me on there and that I wouldn’t be able to counter it because it was exclusive for women and that if I ever did (that was back when I was interested in girls) find a girl that I liked she would look on there and see that other girls had said bad things about how my appearance and then wouldn’t like me anymore. So I asked a female friend to please check if any comments had been made on that app about me. She started laughing at me. I was confused, so I asked her why, and she said that I wouldn’t have) to worry about it because I probably haven’t ever had sex. I was really shocked when she said this. I mean, this was a girl (feminist who volunteers at a crisis center for women) whom I had done quite a bit for and supported emotionally before we were friends for no reason other than that she reached out to me and I was being nice. And she was laughing in my face and insulting about having a legitimate fear. I asked her how she could possibly know this because I HAD NEVER EVEN ONCE complained about this or discussed my lack of sexual history with her and she just laughed again.
I stopped talking to her that day and that day helped me realize just how evil and vindictive feminists are. You guys are pretending right now that you don’t assess a person’s worth by how many times he or she has had sex. But I have seen articles on this website itself in which David Futrelle himself has attacked MRAs and claimed that they’re just bitter because they can’t get laid.
This is why I don’t like feminism. You guys actually do assess a man’s worth based on how much he has had sex. I have never once had any sort of negative comment in this manner from non-feminist friends. Only the feminist ones have made these comments.
Harassment isn’t OK. No matter who does it and no matter who the victim is. That said, a lot of women do go through it more. When I was a teenager it would happen multiple times a day. When I talk to men about street harassment they have on or two examples of it happening to them at most. You can’t draw an equivalence because it happened to you once.
Wow, an unaccountably large percentage of your friends appear to have come straight out of Ye Olde General Store of Evil Feminist Tropes. Or possibly Ol’ Strawman’s Factory for Rebranding People You Don’t Like As Feminists. How bizarre.
Wow, bittersteel, you have known some shitty feminists. They sound like even shittier friends. I’m sorry about that. People who are supposed to have your back shouldn’t shame you or deny you support because someone else might have it worse.
But why are your shitty feminist ex-friends an example of how all feminists are awful? Especially since you’re capable of admitting that not all MRA’s do certain things?
“Oh yes, I consider you such a close friend, but I’m never going to talk to you about this one area of your life because I just don’t care.”
*blinkblink*
@bittersteel
No one is judging a man’s worth according to how many times he’s fucked. Rather, we are insulting misogynist men who display a creepy, disgusting entitlement to women’d bodies by suggesting that it is precisely because of their personality that they are rejected by women, not because women are evil and want men to suffer from “blue balls”. That’s not the same as insulting a man for not having enough sex according to some arbitrary patriarchal standard.
And yes, it is true that most misogynist men are angry at women because of their male entitlement. They feel entitled to women’s bodies, and are angry when they can’t own them. That’s not the same as shaming a man for his sexuality and you know it. We are shaming misogynist men for being entitled shitheads, not for being pathetic human beings who don’t have enough sex.
Bittersteel,
I really don’t believe you when you claim to have scores of feminist friends who all just happen to be horrible nightmare straw feminists. All we need is a tale of a feminist who yelled at a man for holding a door open for her and we have straw feminist bingo.
Please provide examples of feminist bigotry that has a source you can link to. Stop using anecdotes as evidence.
Of course you haven’t men calling women sluts for turning them down if you’re a man who doesn’t listen to the experiences of women in his life. Not seeing something =/= that thing not existing. I don’t hear people being called racial slurs too often. Does that mean it doesn’t happen? No. That means I’m white.
“because I’m an unattractive male, it was somehow ok for them to do that.”
Well,at least you don’t have to worry about sperm jacking?
but still I’m curious you said your friend is a feminist,if you told him that it’s okay for a woman to steal a man’s share of wealth,if he disagree with you would that make him a bad feminist?
Frankly your issue with him is not that he is a feminist but the fact he thinks you should feel flattered when the obese women harassed you…but I don’t know how you can conclude that feminism to blame for all of these?
I remember a guy who had been sexually assaulted by a group of old men,most of his male friends keep joking about his ordeal saying “so how was it like to being raped”?
Miind you it was his female friends who actually sympathise with his situationnot his male friends,so somehow feminism is to blame for this?
Are you sure that one experience is the reason you hate feminism?
Or perhaps you have been rejected by women?
Hint: If your shitty friends are into things like evo psych, homophobia and sexually shaming people, they are not good feminists, not matter how hard you squint or how often they use the word.
@bittersteel
Making sweeping generalizations in every comment is not helping your argument, which is not well stated or supported to begin with.
Also using single personal anecdotes to support complex ideas without corroborating citations of that situation being representational or endemic is not doing you any favors.
Yes, many commenters here do use anecdata to refute generalized claims that certain things never or always happen, but no one here stated that men are never subjected to street harassment or that men who are don’t deserve support from their friends.
And please stop implying that older women are gross & should be devoid of sexuality.
Statement (like all of your statements, actually) assumes facts not in evidence. Citation needed.