Though Men’s Rights activists devote an enormous amount of their time denouncing feminism – or at least the imaginary version of feminism that exists only in their own heads – they’re happy to appropriate feminist concepts when it suits them. One that many MRAs seem especially eager to claim for themselves is the idea of the “safe space.”
Of course, their version of the “safe space” bears only a slight resemblance to the feminist original. Feminists seek to create spaces for discussion in which say, rape survivors can discuss their experiences without being triggered by insensitive arguers and trolls and mansplainers in general.
When MRAs talk about “safe spaces,” by contrast, their goal is often to exclude women not just from discussion spaces but from full participation in society, essentially declaring giant arenas of work and play, from STEM fields to video games, to be places where feminists, and women in general, should fear to tread.
And so it’s hardly surprising that more than a few MRAs are arguing that the Zoe Quinn “scandal” proves that women and gaming don’t mix – or, at least, that they shouldn’t.
Consider the little manifesto recently “pinned” as the top post on the Men’s Rights subreddit, in which a fellow calling himself mradiscus lamented what he called “a pattern of female feminists migrating to formerly male spaces, demanding to be accommodated and eventually causing conflict and alienation.”
The “male spaces” he has in mind – the “hacking scene,” atheism, and the video game industry – won’t come as a shock to anyone familiar with the current state of nerdboy rage, but might trouble anyone who thinks that women are, you know, equal to men and have the same rights to choose their own careers and have their own interests and beliefs.
Not only that, but there is just a teensy bit of irony in that the way that MRAs and others are trying to drive off the feminist, er, invaders is by harassing them. That is, MRAs are appropriating the concept of “safe spaces” — designed to protect those in them from harassment and abuse — and using it as an excuse for … harassment and abuse.
But let’s step back a bit, because we still don’t have an answer as to why any of these “spaces” should be defined as male in the first place. How is atheism – the lack of a belief in god or gods – only a dude thing? When did guys get the right to call dibs on the gaming business?
Well, as mradiscus sees it, these “spaces” have traditionally been essentially nerdboy preserves, and should be protected from the pernicious influence of “female feminists” who, presumably, have no real interest in hacking or gaming or skepticism and whose real goal is just to make life hard for already beleaguered nerd dudes:
A scene predominantly populated by rather introverted young males becomes popular and attracts, among others, young women with a feminist mindset. Some of these women then go on and demand to be accommodated. Their demands are mostly met, and so we see the emergence of “gender awareness teams” at hacking conferences, no-means-no campaigns at anime conventions and a whole lot of conference panel slots devoted to “feminist this” and “gender that”.
Mradiscus then offers what I can only call a “revisionist” history of the harassment of feminist women from Rebecca Watson to Zoe Quinn:
What we also see is a whole lot of scandals. What seems to spark them most of the time is a overreaction to a minor offense, blown way out of proportion by a semi-popular feminist and her fan base who then proceed to launch an attack on the whole “misogynistic” scene. The young men feel cornered and unfairly attacked and retaliate with inappropriate and infelicitous measures which only leads to the feminists seeing their prejudices confirmed. Rape threat allegations are launched, there’s doxxing and name-calling all-around and new-found fame for a brave and courageous young feminist who may or may not proceed to make a career out of her struggle.
I should point out that none of the women who have allegedly “made … career[s] out of [their] struggles” actually asked to be harassed and demonized. If the harassers are angry that their harassment allowed Anita Sarkeesian to raise a lot more money than she asked for, they really have only themselves to blame.
Mradiscus ends with an ominous prediction-slash-threat that young men aren’t going to remain “patient” for much longer – and that things could get much worse for feminists venturing into these “male spaces.”
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if the patience of these young nerdy men turns out to be a shallow well that’s drawing to a close. I sense quite a bit of alienation in the hacking and gaming sub-cultures when it comes to feminist topics. What do you think?
I think that you have a very strange notion of “patience.”
Naturally, MRAs being MRAs, mradiscus’ little manifesto – dripping with unexamined misogynistic assumptions and a quiet, curiously passive-aggressive rage – won praise and more than one hundred upvotes from the subreddit regulars.
The most extraordinary response to mradiscus’ rant was also the top-ranked comment, a long screed from a fellow calling himself a0i that argued, with complete seriousness (and occasional very confused references to the theories of Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci), that
The logic of how feminists target predominantly male spaces is very similar to the pattern of locust swarms.
Yep. Feminists are LOCUSTS.
Wherever there are men, there are targets for false accusations, male scapegoats, and fake victims. False accusations can’t happen without men, and neither can feminism. When there are too many women somewhere, you can’t claim that the environment is dominated by men, and feminists have nothing left to justify their presence. Feminists can’t thrive because they lack a scapegoat. They seek out a place where men are, and fabricate outrage at finding too many men in once place, at one time.
They have to find fresh environments with concentrations of male majorities, for “structures of misogyny” to pretend-struggle against. Thus, nerd culture being targeted, video games being targeted, Anita Sarkeesian making up being attacked, etc.
Yep, apparently all those hundreds of thousands of comments you might have seen attacking Sarkeesian all over the internet are nothing but a mirage. That Flash game in which you could cover her face in bruises? You must have dreamed it.
It’s telling that a major feminist concern is for “women’s exclusive space”, while another feminist concern is for “women’s inclusion in male-dominated spaces”. They fight to get in, just to kick the men out. …
Feminists demand unlimited access for women, as proof of men’s commitment to equality, but demand limited access for men, to prove men’s concern for safety.
Wat? I’m pretty sure no feminists are talking about excluding men from video gaming.
This works, despite the irony that — if you believed in their equality, you wouldn’t make special accommodations for their safety.
Uh, no, because if one group faces systematic oppression because of prejudice, the only way to ensure an egalitarian society is by making “special accommodations for their safety.” That’s why we have hate crime laws.
In the case of gaming, and atheism and tech in general, the only “special accommodations” feminists have asked for have been, you know, protection from sexual harassment and assault. Protections that also apply to men.
If there is one principle to understand about the tactics used to engineer women’s privilege over men in society, it is this:
- “what you intend to do to an opponent, you must accuse them of doing to you” …
Frame your victim as your victimizer, put them in a position to want to prove themselves innocent. Frame your attacks as self-defense, frame your transgressions as righteous. Frame the enemy as using propaganda, make this part of your propaganda. Frame the enemy as a threat, before you launch your attack. Pretend to be a victim, while attacking the accused.
Apparently MRAs are utterly oblivious to irony.
Nailed it, strivingally. Though I’m not bewildered and saddened, I’m fucking pissed off, not least when seldom-commenting or lurking members pop in to start schooling regular contributors.
That’s exactly what I was thinking you were doing.
Again, just what I thought was coming from you, rattling off lists like that at pallygirl. How about reading the thread like I suggested before digging yourself in deeper?
For bonus “really?” points, the proposed list contained the word “irrational”, which is a highly gendered word often deployed as a means of shutting women up or implying that we’re inherently incapable of reason. Which kind of demonstrates why “well, if one person thinks that word a. is offensive but words b. and c. are better then let’s go with what they said rather than actually talking about this and coming to a consensus” is really not a good way to approach this issue.
The problem with this is that stupid is useful to conversation in ways that words like “bitch” aren’t. No one has yet given me any other word that expresses “person who expresses nonsensical, ill-thought out and selfish ideas which I dislike” succintly. If you can give me one I’ll happily use it instead, but until then, I’m going to make do with what I’ve got because people understand stupid to mean all that stuff, not just the literal meaning.
Emaray? 😉
@ Athywren
I apologize for telling you to shut up, though. As frustrated as I am with this conversation, and that was uncalled for.
I can’t believe Pallygirl is gone. Another amazing contributor gone over these word arguments. I’m really going to miss her.
Am I the only person wondering if the word ‘stupid’ has actually directly hurt anyone’s feelings? I thought it was a vague insult straight out of childhood, nearly on the level of ‘dummy’ and ‘poophead’ when it comes to soft insults. That word has never had much charge for me, and I thought I was as touchy about ableism as the next person.
The word ditzy used to drive me crazy because it was used against me a lot as an Add-riddled master of spacing out to the point I often lose track of time. Not that it’s use would bother me now. And I’m not even sure where I’m going with this anymore. I need to sleep.
Just delurking (finally) to thank @Incognita Secunda for finding me a new shirt and to thank @Kim for reminding me of both C64 gaming with a tape drive and the wonderful SSI D&D games. Good times. 🙂
Well, there was this guy I used to be friends with. I thought he was pretty amazing, and liked him a lot. We were having a conversation one time and I was saying stuff like how I had no patience for stupid people or similar, and he got really upset. I would never have put him in the stupid people group, but he had been told a lot growing up that he was stupid, so he felt attacked. I was mortified that what I had said was so unthinkingly cruel and I apologised.
While I still get frustrated by people who just don’t get things, I try to keep in mind that smarter isn’t the same as better. And I will continue to use stupid to refer to people who hold stupid ideas especially when they are intelligent enough to know better.
All right, look. I’m gone, too, FWIW. I have been following the blog and conversations for months, have made occasional comments that seemed to go over well, got very involved in a thread that is close to my heart, brought up some discomfort about the way a word was being deployed in the course of that conversation and explained why–and all hell broke loose. I wasn’t “policing” or “schooling” anybody or accusing anyone of ableism or any other such thing, I was just bringing up a point of discomfort for discussion. Since it has, however, been made abundantly clear that people who aren’t deemed “regulars” are expected to know their place and shut up, okay then. Will do.
@Cassandrakitty
Don’t worry about it. I come back, and within a day I’m stirring up freshly buried trouble… I get that that’s annoying. Probably even infuriating. I’m sorry.
I see what you mean about “irrational,” too, and I’ll have to think about how and when I use it, though I think there’s an argument for its use in general that stupid just doesn’t have. I won’t go into it unless pressed, though, because I don’t want to keep stirring. This discussion isn’t my idea of fun, and it’s clearly not yours either.
In my defence, though, the list I “rattled off” wasn’t aimed at Pallygirl or anything she said, but Alex’s, “but ‘stupid’ is still a pretty good descriptor for a poorly thought out comment, right?” and was merely a list of other “pretty good descriptors” that happen to not carry the same connotations as “stupid.”
@Kitteh
I’m on page 5 of the war machine thread so far.
@Kim
Dawkins.
…not necessarily completely sure about the selfish bit, but he’s certainly fitting the rest recently.
… he got really upset. I would never have put him in the stupid people group, but he had been told a lot growing up that he was stupid, so he felt attacked. I was mortified that what I had said was so unthinkingly cruel and I apologised.
That is the only problem with the word, but it can be a significant one. I used to have a very busy time getting our tuition students to stop calling themselves stupid.
People who had a miserable time as kids can have a strong reaction. But if you want to be technical, it isn’t ableist, people with intellectual disabilities have other problems. In fact, they’re about as likely to be called stupid as people with less obvious learning problems and people who have no difficulties at all. And I wouldn’t put it in the PTSD group either, even though it’s bringing up reminders of bullying by kids as well as bad teaching and bad parenting.
I avoid using it for that reason, but I wouldn’t put it into the do-not-touch territory like r*t*rd and gendered slurs. I find it easy to avoid because I think saying that someone is (being) silly conveys my meaning even better. It combines perceptions of witlessness, immaturity and triviality effortlessly and all at once.
But then you listed “irrational”, which has other connotations, gendered ones at that. I’m not sure there’s any word that doesn’t bother somebody in some way, but I don’t really want this space to become Shakesville and “stupid” and “idiot” are pretty generic and inoffensive for most. I mean I’m happy to drop either if that’s the consensus here; I just wonder what other words that aren’t actually slurs that people would expect us to drop down the road.
Silly doesn’t sound like an insult to me. In fact, I only ever use it as a compliment as the opposite of serious. Even if in context it does sound like it means what you say it does – it is far too soft to be used as a real insult. Witless is stronger, but it has the same problems as stupid.
Incognita, I’ll be sorry to see you go. I understand what you were saying about “stupid” and I don’t agree, but I also don’t think the discussion would have been quite as contentious if it had happened at another time. Knowing that this is coming on the heels of a big group blow-up may not make it any better, but I hope you’ll consider coming back when everyone has had time to heal a bit. I’d certainly welcome your continued contributions here.
Honestly, most of the criticism I’ve seen of “stupid” from people with disabilities has not been that the word itself is ableist, but that they were often called stupid when their disabilities kept them from understanding or reacting “normally” to something. It’s not ableist per se, but it’s part of the experience of having a learning or developmental disability. Which I think makes things a little more complicated.
I don’t know if I’m one of the people now being accused of being the language police. A brand new commenter one-time commenter made two statements that I thought, especially in combination, were over the line, so I said so. And then later I expressed a personal opinion about words like stupid, without calling them slurs or calling anyone out for using them. (I have several friends with kids who have cognitive disabilities, so I freely admit I am a bit sensitized to hurtful language in this area.)
For the record, all my exchanges with pallygirl have been perfectly friendly and pleasant, and if she has left I certainly hope she reconsiders because I think she’s a good egg and I’ll miss her.
Clearly there’s no consensus around those words here, Alex.
This next level of conversation around the word stupid is making a lot of sense. I still don’t think it’s a slur level insult, but I can see how it could be upsetting to someone who was treated poorly through use of the word. I don’t think I’ve used the word in the few comments that I’ve made here, but I think I’ve come up with an alternative. There is always the option of using the word ‘fool’, which has fallen out of common usage. As in, we all know what it means but most people don’t actually use it anymore unless they happen to be a villain yelling at an incompetent henchman.
As an added bonus, it was originally associated with jesters. Then again, jesters were paid to act foolish and the members of the manosphere do so for free. It’s almost generous of them. Almost.
I happen to use fool all the time, but I don’t know if it’s caught on to anyone. But I find it’s very satisfying to say “You fool” to someone who’s being one.
Also, my siblings and I were treated to the word “stupid” pretty often, too, but I think it was more the way and the frequency with which the word was applied to us rather than the word itself. It would have been the same for any other word had it been used that way. Can we agree that parents and teachers shouldn’t insult children, regardless of the word?
If people want to drop this subject, by the way, this will be the last I say on it.
I think the last person I saw use “fool” around here was Steele, who many of you won’t remember. (And who was actually a sockpuppet for someone who shall not be named.)
Here’s how he used it:
Which then inspired Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III to write this:
XD
Ahaha! And thanks for reminding me why I love this site. 🙂
This exactly. Every single insult out there is bound to be offensive to somebody. But this is a mockery blog and we have to have some insults available to us. As I said on the War Machine thread I don’t have any desire to comment on Shakesville because it’s too “safe” and the comments sections are never dynamic, interesting and fun like they usually are here.
It says right at the top of the page that this isn’t a safe space. The trolls often don’t grasp that this is a mockery blog but I didn’t think I’d start seeing that from the regulars. If you’re really sensitive to the most trivial and generic of insults, I understand, but this is not the place for you.
I’m going to be terrible and double down on defending calling someone stupid as not being ableist.
Mutli-paragraph essay inbound.
My thesis is that genuine recurring stupidity is a negative character trait. And the apparent inability to be thoughtful and introspective is something that does not deserve the slightest hint of deference due to imagined biodeterminism. People being stupid is something they can help.
Being functionally mentally disabled is to lack FULL personhood under law. And with good reason, because there is a necessary level of understanding needed to actually engage with real world matters, such as contracts, voting, and medical decisions. We actively make distinctions because we must.
But even a person who is fully disabled deserves the protections of their fundamental rights of life and self determination. And we don’t just deny them that because they are still people.
Now, what on earth do genuinely disabled people have to do with “stupid” people and bad opinions? Self-determination.
There’s the implication, when defending against a statement as being ableist, that the underlying character flaws are congenital or otherwise inherent. This is simply untrue. Even for something considered as scientifically “innate” as IQ, your own choices can influence it rather substantially. Everyone we recognize as capable of being condemned for their opinions and beliefs is a person who we recognize as being able to change themselves.
They can learn more. They can think more. They can reflect more. But in light of failing to do so, they appear, for lack of a more complex neurological explanation, stupid. And to summarize that condition in simplistic terms isn’t to assert that they are flawed in some way that justifies bias, but rather to assert that they have a substantial moral failing in how they engage of the keeping of their own mind. All self-determinate creatures are responsible not just for what they think, but how they think.
And the anti-ableist defense covers their recurring personal failure as a underlying condition that needs social protection.
Finally, an acknowledgement of how you’re right, because it’s never simple:
I appreciate the reminder that people who are stupid are still people, and no amount of character flaws can ever justify broad-based dismissals of the opinions others based on simplistic classifications.
But that’s not what’s going on here. The original poster was trying to make, however clumsily a charge for self-improvement.
ikanreed — that DEFINITELY didn’t help your case any.
Before I go all tear deer, I want to say I have no strong feelings one way or another on “stupid”, I tend to use it to refer to acts, not people, anyways (well, expect my brother, but I reserve older sibling insult rights on that one!)
That said, hi Athywren! Stop comparing a word that’s maybe questionably a slur to one that obviously is. After the war machine thread, it won’t go well, and really, the word you picked? That comparison would never go over well. Please, just don’t do it.
As for — “Now it feels a little like the assumption of good faith (between regulars, I mean, not obvious trolls) has gone out the window.” Can we knock it off with that too please? Seriously, assuming good faith with people who haven’t proven they don’t deserve it is one of the things I love about this place. To the point I keep telling R to drop by, mention he’s the R I speak of, and he should be given good faith if he steps on toes, as he’s worried about doing. (He can be prone to asking lots of questions and it can come off as JAQing off). I don’t want this place to go from “I know you aren’t an asshole, so why are you acting like one today?” to “you’re an asshole”, not for his sake, but because we ALL step in it occasionally. To quote one of my pins “to err is human, to arr is pirate”.
Seconding Kim that “silly” doesn’t register as anything remotely bad to me. My fish are silly, Puff’s a big goof, sillypuss is a great cat nickname…in short, silly doesn’t have the same connotations stupid does. In my head, stupid registers more as “well, you didn’t think that through now did you?” Which, of course, does make it a questionable term to apply to MRAs, since they did think it through, and are still assholes.
Actually, I think with stupid, moron, and idiot I’m absolutely fine applying them to ideas or acts, but applying them to people makes me a bit…idk. It implies MRAs aren’t evil, just ignorant. I’d say they’re assholes with some stupid ideas, I guess.
As for any word being offensive, I got suspend once, and I damned proud of it. This one kid would not stop calling me “rover”, so I kicked him. Point here is not that about my kicking ability, but about the word. Cuz obviously, rover has plenty of non-insulting uses, like, you know, being a name for a dog. Or “Michael Jackson”, that kid got chased home, frequently, until he threatened to tell his mother I was chasing him I told him to go ahead, just make sure to tell her why. Should I consider all references to Jackson to be insults? Course not.
Is stupid a more common insult? Yeah. But using “genius” sarcastically has the same problem. As does doofus. I guess my point here is that ANYTHING can have been used to hurt someone, and I thought the point of avoiding ableist language was, to use an example, not conflating us crazies with those assholes, and also that there’s no moral failing (or such) in being crazy. Are stupid, idiot, etc used as terms for people who’re doing nothing besides not being “normal”, enough that using them to imply moral failing has splash damage? Idk, but I think that’s the question that needs to be answered to stop having these dust ups. Not just about those words, but in general — does insult X have splash damage that should be avoided?
If not, insult away! If so, maybe don’t.
/tired ramble
“ikanreed — that DEFINITELY didn’t help your case any.”
Hmm. Okay. I was trying to clarify an ethical construction in which criticizing someone for “being stupid” is both valid and justified.
I don’t know if “helping my case” is the goal, since I didn’t actually engage in the “ableism” being identified.
I thought the reason we avoided using certain words was because they are used to marginalize, demonize and/or dehumanize various oppressed groups, not because they were triggering or hurtful. ‘Crazy’, as Argenti pointed out, is this kind of slur because it is frequently used in the mainstream to demonize mental illness and to dismiss violent behaviour.
I find ‘stupid’ can be personally triggering, it was used on me by bullies as a kid, but I’m iffy on it being a word I’d consider ableist, though I’m not sure I can really explain why. I’m also in the camp of being okay with using it on acts rather than on people, but I think that has a lot to do with my personal history and that only covers how *I* feel comfortable using the word; it’s not a statement of how I think others should.
I guess what I’m circling around to saying is that unless it can be clearly cited as meeting the kind of criteria I mentioned (and I really do mean clearly!), well, this isn’t a safe space, we’ve all been warned we could find things that are triggering on this site, and it’s our own responsibility to do self care and leave the comment thread, if that’s what we need to do.
And I love the word ‘fool’. I think it’s perfect, even if a troll did use it all the time. It reminds me of Mr. T.