Lucy Walcott, who publishes a blog called NotParticularlyPauciloquent, isn’t afraid of the big questions. The tough questions. The important questions.
And in a recent post she takes on what is perhaps the most important question of our age: What is We Hunted the Mammoth?
To paraphrase the great Marge Gunderson, I’m not so sure I agree 100% with her police work.
To me, it seems like an arrogant blog made for one purpose and one purpose only, to attack MRA and anything that feminists don’t like.
Uh, what about the cat pictures? I post a lot of cat pictures too.
This blog has no substance, none, none at all.
I’m getting the impression that this isn’t going to be a good review.
It’s about lying about the other side and mocking them all of the time.
As everyone knows, quoting people verbatim is the most insidious form of lying there is.
Oh, I can’t write on the comments section of it, however, because it’s comments are so havily moderated that not a single word of criticism of the sites content can get through. Literally, look at the comments section, about 100% pro-WHTM.
Uh, you’re free to post what you like. I don’t ban for disagreement, As long as you don’t threaten anyone, or make rape jokes, or post victim-blamey shit about people who are already being harassed by half the internet, or post a hundred comments in an hour, or do something else that’s totally vile and/or annoying, you’re pretty much good to go. Trouble is, a lot of the “critics” who come to this site actually do one or more of these terrible things.
Because a lot of them are assholes and/or trolls. Because the Men’s Rights movement is little more than a collection of assholes and trolls.
Now while I am not a MRA, I will state that this site goes above and beyond The O’reilly Factor to become the next Rush Limbaugh of blogging. The sites logo literally says that the whole purpose of the site is to mock.
Also “track.” As in, monitor and write about. You know, like, say, Right Wing Watch, or HateWatch, or Justin Bieber Watch.
Oh, wait, that last one literally is a Justin Bieber watch.
The blog is seeping with arrogance: “I reserve the right to ban anyone at any time for any reason I want.” is just the tip of the iceberg.
Actually, everyone who has a blog has this right, and most of them take advantage of it from time time. I pointed this out explictly, because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life explaining to some asshole rules lawyer who came up with a new and unforseen way to troll the blog why I’m not letting him post any more.
This blog is filled with this head-up-your-ass style of talk. This high-and-mighty level of talk while the blog itself only quotes specific people while refusing to even acknowledge anyone else.
Wait, what? I quote “specific people?” Am I supposed to quote, er, unspecific people? Or groups of people? Or everyone on planet earth?
And it HATES the MRM. Completely, totally, unethically, laments it. Mocks it. I may call out feminism on many points, but I never mock it for shits and giggles.
I mock the Men’s Rights movement because writing about it seriously all the time would be really fucking depressing. Because MRAs are, by and large, shitheads. I mean, seriously, have you ever looked at the horrible things they say and do?
If you haven’t, let me suggest you go through the archives of a most fascinating website called We Hunted the Mammoth for countless examples.
This blog is only around for the notion of inviting a fringe minority of people who seriously hate anything non-feminist.
Really? I like a lot of things that aren’t feminist. Cats. Pizza. Music. I mean, I love Kathleen Hanna and all, but most music is by people who aren’t feminists. And guess what, I don’t automatically hate it because of that. Same with art. Same with books. Same with, well, people. Feminism, historically speaking, is a fairly recent development, and it’s still mostly a minority taste. Which means that most people, and most things, in the world are non-feminist.
If I were given a job hating things that aren’t feminist, I wouldn’t have enough hours in the day to do it. I’d have to hire assistants. Lots of assistants. Assistants who, unlike my current assistants, aren’t cats.
Luckily, the job I’ve assigned myself with this blog is a lot less ambitious than that: I track (and, yes, mock) a relatively small number of people, mostly but not exclusively dudes, whose basically devote their entire lives to coming up with new excuses for hating women.
And yes, I will confess that I’m not really very fond of these people. Except as a source of material.
Which doesn’t help the feminists either. This mocking drivel seems to be very much the thing that many feminists seem to bash male feminists for. Sorry David, but even the Feminist Current wants you to just sit down and shut up.
Huh. Most feminists I know don’t really have a problem with jokes at the expense of MRA asshats. They have a problem when male feminists act like entitled asshats themselves, as I’ve learned by doing just that and getting called out for it. Sometimes sitting down and shutting up is the right thing for male feminists to do, provided that they don’t sit there sulking instead of listening.
Come to think of it, there are a lot of people who could benefit from sitting down and shutting up from time to time. And in some cases, all of the time.
Way to be against misogyny by telling women who aren’t for feminism that they are sad and mockable individuals.
Again, there are lots of women who aren’t feminists. I don’t write about them, much less mock them. The women I write about on this blog are a small minority of these women – mostly female MRAs who are as actively hateful as their male counterparts, and who devote much of their time to, yes, mocking and sometimes viciously harassing other women.
Do they deserve to be called out for that? Well, yeah, as much as any #GamerGate dickhead posting shit about Anita Sarkeesian does.
I am actually starting to think this site is a troll site meant to get feminists to agree with obviously man-hating propaganda to use against them later on.
This is the favorite insincere “criticism” from people who don’t like this blog but who haven’t actually read enough of it to even begin the process of assembling anything approaching a real critique. I would say [citation needed] for the alleged “man-hating propaganda,” but I’ve said that to countless people before and I’ve yet to get a single example of the misandry that is said to be everywhere here.
But sadly, this site is everywhere, and I cannot go anywhere without finding this radical Feminist Rush Limbaugh blog.
Well, that’s a new one, at least. I’ll give you credit for that.
Like proxieme, yours is one blog where I can stay abreast of how truly awful the MRM and its followers of either gender can be without having to wade through the actual online muck-reading too much of it would drive me nuts both in content and grammatical errors. I’d probably be unable to do what you do, and I’m all for it, and confused cats. Walcott sounds like a few women against feminism that I know personally and it goes without saying that I hope she doesn’t reach too many people.
I’ll tell you, some of the quotes I’ve read in this and other entries take the cake like a LOLCat insisting it r his birfday!
I’m guessing they didn’t try commenting – just decided that since most comments are “pro WHTM”, it must mean everything else is banned. I mean, I have seen critical and disagreeing posts here plenty of times. Heck, I even remember posting a comment disagreeing with something some time back.
And yeah, how dare a site that states its point is to mock misogyny… mock misogyny! Its false advertising, I tells ya!
*It’s.
Keyboard acting up again 😛
@ Policy of Madness
Bill Maher is a mixed bag. I like some of the stuff he has done in the past, but he has shown himself to be an asshat in many ways. This notion that comedy cannot be criticized is utter B.S.
In my view, criticism is a healthy and necessary part of a democratic society, but we have to weigh what kind of criticism is being offered. For example, in David’s post, we have a critique of this blog. Obviously, any douchebag can have any opinion and so what? However, for us to give any credence to the criticism, we need to look at what the value is. The fact-free romp about WHtM parading as thoughtful criticism is a valuable case-study. If you know this website, you can dismiss the post, but its intent is clearly to bias anyone unfamiliar with the site, not to produce healthy public debate.
I don’t know what Maher’s intent was in saying that Limbaugh was a comedian. My own view is that he, like any douchebag asshat, has the right to his opinion (informed, knee-jerk, unformed, whatever) but he has no right to be free from people questioning him or saying he is an asshat. None of us has that right. I find, though, with people who hold opinions they haven’t investigated or questioned, they get very upset at being questioned. Maher can call anyone anything as well, but he doesn’t get some free pass of specialness (gosh, I want one of those!) because he said it under the umbrella of “comedy”.
I didn’t care for Sarah Palin – still don’t – or many of the women who have risen on the right. However, I recognize (unlike many of them) that they are the victim of misogyny. Granted, some of them seem to bask in the glory of “being attractive”, but I hate that this is somehow part of their political campaign, as if *that’s* what’s important.
/rambling rant off/
His defense of Limbaugh was essentially the same: Limbaugh is a comedian and saying unkind things about comedy is both heresy and a positive threat to democracy and the American Way.
Of course comedy is unassailable!
It’s an art form!
Just like games!
They’re an unassailable art!
Didn’t you know that all art is freeze peach and the refore SO SACROSANCT that it is above criticism and consequence?
/s
On another note, if I’m ever outrageously wealthy I’m going to hire an army of sky writers to spell out the legal parameters of free speech over US skies.
Or maybe pamphlet bomb.
Or something.
And then I’ll run around yelling, “IT’S ART! IT’S ART! YOU CAN’T CRITICIZE ME OR PROSECUTE ME FOR LITTERING AND NOT FILING THOUSANDS OF FLIGHT PLANS BECAUSE IT’S ART!”
@ Drdg – Thank-you! ::blushes slightly while curtsying::
But, Galadriel, and Arwen, and whatsername from Rohan (the shieldmaiden – you know who I mean)! she killed the Witch King of Angmar! Well, OK, not Arwen (except maybe a little in the movie). And not Galadriel, either, really. And, I guess not really the shieldmaiden, either, cause her motivations were so non-feminist. And… Point conceded!
Oh, wait! What about Tom Bombadil and the River Daughter? Oh, right. Nevermind.
Re: LoTR: Meh, it was a product of the man who wrote it who was very much a product of his time.
I’ll cast a critical eye on it, tease out Tolkien’s influences and motivations, and still move on and enjoy the work that he did and the world he created.
Once, my husband got on tear against Tolkien for his blatant Orientalism and sexism. I conceded his points, but also did assert that the characterizations of the enemy’s human helpers were also supposed to be localized – from the (fantasy) social-historical POV of the men of Gondor and points NW.
I had (and honestly still have) no idea if that’s true, but it sounded plausible enough 😀
FWIW, I *did* find a source in which a Tolkien scholar referenced some of his writings indicating a late-in-life realization regarding some of his earlier biases. According to the source, he had planned to expand the scope of Middle Earth to include the references made to the Wizards in the East and the people of their lands. Unfortunately, he died before that could happen.
(I think that I have it bookmarked on my desktop. I’m currently on my phone.)
Man, David, what Google bomber did you use to get your blog “everywhere”? Good job, man.
Well, Lucy…if the shoe fits, WEAR IT.
(Almost done with my lunch and so almost done with commenting.)
I did a quick search and couldn’t find it, but here’s a comment on a blog (without a linked source) saying the same:
So, Tolkien would have to work within the bounds of his media. And if you read some of his later correspondences that did not make it into The Letters of JRR Tolkien, you can see that the question of racism and racialism weighed heavily upon Tolkien, and his attempts to re-create his Cosmology included explicit attempts to model the entire globe from the beginning, so as to include everyone, but to make the Mytho-Cosmology explicitly from the perception of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.
Tolkien never got a chance to read any of the works of Joseph Campbell, but Tolkien’s work follows exactly the path discovered by Campbell in all Mythologies, and Cosmologies of the Ancients. Thus, alien cultures would eventually have to be included in Middle-earth to call it “complete.”
http://matthewbailey.mymiddleearth.com/2012/09/03/did-the-east-and-south-contain-people-not-under-the-shadow-of-sauronmorgoth/
I wonder if his POV regarding gender dynamics evolved…but, alas, my hummus is gone.
@ proxieme – the 11-year old Tolkien geek in me would love to read that! I always assumed that we were so heavily embedded in the thoughts and view points of the main characters, most of whom had racist biases, that the view of the Men of the East was just what the peoples of the West thought of them. Unreliable narrator type stuff.
I also have heard of a book written from the other side – a (?) Russian guy who wrote that Mordor was trying to have an industrial revolution and overthrow the tyrannical hegemony of the Elves in order to liberate the oppressed peoples of Middle Earth. I would love to get my sweaty little hands on an English translation of that!
And by “assistants”, you presumably mean “overlords”.
Also, “not pauciloquent”? Means VERBOSE. Why not just call yourself A Verbose Verbigerator?
Squeeeee! Thanks for the link, proxieme!
Personally, I’m not a fan of surrounding a creative work with a bunch of explanatory text by or about the creator. A book or a painting or song or what-have-you stands on its own. The author of a book does not actually get to come in after the fact and tell us that our interpretations are wrong because we’re interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. If William Golding wants to write an essay about civilization and the Bible, to make extra sure that we get the intended point, he should have done that instead of writing Lord of the Flies. He doesn’t get to write the book and then also write an essay to explain the meaning of the book. If the meaning of the book isn’t within or between the text, he’s done it wrong.
So, my philosophy is that LotR is problematic, on its face and between its text, and we need to acknowledge that if we’re going to enjoy it. No amount of extra-textual explanation is going to change what is actually inside the text.
Question – this person knows that there are people who’re neither feminists nor MRAs, right? And that those people are the majority?
A Very Verbose Verbigerator!
A Very Verbose Vitrolic Verbigerator!
Definitely clickbait, trying to bring some notice to a failing blog.
I can sympathize, as my blog gets very little traffic and rarely gets comments. Some might deem my blog a “failing blog”, as well. Only difference is, I’m okay with that. I’m comfortable with posting more personal stuff because of how low-key it is. If my blog were to suddenly get a lot bigger, was read by a lot more people, and I gained a name for myself, some of my posts would suddenly go private, and many more would be edited to remove some of the more personal stuff.
Not that I’d completely mind that. I wouldn’t mind having my blog becoming bigger than it currently is, with more comments and more readers and such. It would just mean a lot more self-censorship in what I post.
That said, I’m also more of a lurker here because much of what I want to say is usually already said, so I don’t really have much to contribute. This blog, however, is fucking awesome and so are the commenters. It’s about the only way I can handle actually reading MRA/PUA shit, because otherwise I’d never leave my bed.
This blog basically keeps me from being a full-on misanthrope (as opposed to just being a partial misanthrope who actually wants to try and make things better so there’s no reason to be a misanthrope)…
quoting proxieme for truth.
“I like this blog because you mock the MRM/PUA/etc. It’s the only lense through which I can view their shite without getting depressed or enraged.”
And also I am so delighted with GamerGoons latest plan to boycott all gaming studios who speak out against them I hope they stop playing games completely as a result.
I just re-read Lord of the Rings for the first time in a couple of decades, and wow is it ever problematic. The backstory is also fairly impenetrable without the appendices. But I also found in the text a quiet, sad study of what carrying the Ring does to Frodo.
The reader just has to decide for themselves whether the intimate portrait of a trauma survivor is worth all the problematic elements. I think it is, but I have a lot of privilege.
Having said that, I have developed a guess that the Ring granted immortality, and that’s why Frodo, Bilbo and Sam get taken to Elf Heaven, which is still part of the world, rather than die and leave the world like Men get to do.
LotR is troublesome, but I still love it so. The hobbit, the chronicals of Narnia, and Thurber’s 13 clocks were the books my RN Mother Dearest would read to my sib and I, as we huddled against her side in the hallway between our rooms.
Later, she branched out to the full Lotr and some other lit, but the hobbit remains slightly more special.
Memories made, and all.
That said, the LotR could have ended in book 1 if only someone had possessed a sharpie. Seriously!
They could have just scrawled “Destroy Sauron’s Ring” on Goldberry’s forehead (with permission from her, of course). Then Tom Bombadil of the short attention span and complete ring immunity would have gotten it destroyed in no time, because the reminder would be on the only person he remembers consistently.
“This blog is only around for the notion of inviting a fringe minority of people who seriously hate anything non-feminist.”
I think she got this blog confused with “Confused cats against feminism”. SO MUCH CONFUSION!
Hi gallogly. Have a Hallowe’en bondage kitteh (it’s for everyone).
http://everythingfunny.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1bb21.jpg
Agreed, Falconer. I think Tolkien’s experience as a WWI vet is also re-enacted in a lot of the plot. Can you imagine the PTSD those guys suffered? Also, the stories WWI soldiers were told about why they were fighting are a lot like the ones the enemies of Mordor were told about why they were fighting. I just see so many parallels to what I imagine a regular guy from England in the early 20th century would have interpreted the world to be. Yeah, it’s racist, sexist, and classist, but so was the world that Tokien lived in. Observation doesn’t necessarily equal endorsement. Having said that, if someone finds LoTR too problematic, or triggering, then I would respect that choice and not try to sell them on it’s (IMHO) redeeming characteristics.
(BTW – Nerd alert! Sam didn’t go to The West. He stayed in the Shire and married Rosie and had baby Hobbits).
“The Hobbit” was my favourite book my entire tweens and teens. Now my favourite book is the dictionary, Oxford for preference. Because I’m that interesting. I still guilty love Tolkein, though I’m going to go with “The Bromeliad” when my Mouse is old enough instead of “The Hobbit”.