As most of you are no doubt aware, Reddit recently banned the incredibly shitty FatPeopleHate subreddit for harassment. Naturally, members of Reddit’s many other incredibly shitty subreddits — including KotakuInAction, the main GamerGate hangout on Reddit, and of course the Men’s Rights subreddit — are afraid they’ll be next!
“The new age of reddit has begun,” wrote one worried Men’s Rightser. “Admins ban /r/FatPeopleHate (and 4 other subreddits that the admins fail to disclose) for “harassment”. It is only a matter of time before this subreddit gets banned too.”
Meanwhile, in KotakuInAction, a “megathread” about the bans has garnered more than 1100 upvotes and inspired nearly 500 comments.
In that thread, one KiAer has helpfully provided a list of the subreddits Reddit has shut down in recent days. As you can see, most were variants on FatPeopleHate, hastily created in an attempt to get around the ban of the original FatPeopleHate (or just to annoy the site admins); others were offensive in other predictable ways. I’ve highlighted some of the more, er, interesting of the bunch.
My point here?
If you look at a list like the one above and think “oh, no, my favorite subreddit will be next,” then maybe, just maybe, there is something terribly wrong with your favorite subreddit, and probably with you as well.
Men’s Rights: the only self-proclaimed “civil rights” movement outside of literal Nazis that puts itself in the same category as “/r/fatn*ggerhate” and “/r/transf*ggots.”
NOTE TO READERS: My strep throat is better but not gone, and I also have other non-blog things I need to tend to this week, so posting will probably continue to be a bit light.
Just having a “No Nazis” policy wouldn’t be a big deal.
#SpankAFeminist: a bunch of MRA’s having a public group-wank over hitting women that don’t do as they’re told. Must be a day ending in Y.
@Paradoxical Intention
Oh I know it wasn’t directed toward me. I also was kidding about the kinky part. I don’t want the world’s largest toddler Dean Esmay to spank me.
At least his article made for excellent blog fodder.
Spank in a naughty toddler way or in a sexual assault way? Either way, it’s a gross thing to say. Just wondering what kind of gross because I kind of don’t want to look it up!
[Off topic TL;DR]
Internally (as in, within my own head, not necessarily when communicating to others) I use the terms “morality” and “ethics” to mean two very different approaches to achieve ongoing social Benefits Increase and/or Harm Reduction (hereafter abbreviated as BI/HR). I am aware that my personal definitions don’t really match the dictionary definitions and many (most?) people’s concepts of those words. I should probably invent new terms. Or maybe they already exist, I’m just not aware of them. Either way, it’s still easier to use known and familiar words.
Something is “moral” if at least one of the following is true: 1. It intuitively feels like it should be BI/HR to the majority of society. Whether it is actually so matters less than the comfort derived from the perception that it is so. 2. It is concerned with the collective total BI/HR, even if, as a side effect some minority groups get left out or even harmed.
Something is “ethical” if at least one of the following is true: 1. It is actually proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be BI/HR, even if it happens to be uncomfortable and/or counter-intuitive to the majority of society. 2. It is concerned with with the greatest possible number of people gaining BI/HR, leaving no one out if at all possible, even if it results in the collective total BI/HR being “watered down” (not as high as it could otherwise be).
Again, these are my own personal concepts, and I’m self-aware enough not to use those words in this way during actual conversation without a good reason. By these standards, the ideal, perfect form of BI/HR would be something which can be arrived at using either an “ethical” or “moral” approach, and fulfills both definitions of each term when you do.
In practice, things are usually incompatible with both, and you have to choose something. In that case I prefer my concept of “ethics” to win out over “morality” when possible. Though that’s largely because I do not consider offense and discomfort to be harms in of themselves. I will admit, however, that they can amplify certain other forms of harm, and may sometimes need to be taken into consideration.
Gah. That fat hate stuff was starting to bleed over to Imgur where it actually had an awful lot of traction. There were a couple posts at or near the front page that came from r/fatpeoplehate.
It made me stop browsing Imgur as often. Now that reddit clamped down on r/fatpeoplehate it might get better, though now that people know that sort of thing generates fake internet points, I bet it’ll be in user sub from now to perpetuity.
In reply to someone above who was confused about why MRA content hasn’t been removed, the answer is simple. Only offensive shit that affects men will be taken down. That’s why all the misogynistic crap will remain intact – men aren’t affected by it. You can’t attack The Men and get away with it.
Really well-done article. Glad you explained it so I didn’t have to look it up myself. : P
And…yup. I was right on the money about it being creepy sexual and about beating women. Good to see my educated foresight about this isn’t failing me.
Dean, if I wanted you to spank me, I’d fucking ask. I’m capable of asking for things I want from people without playing some fucking game you think we feeemales are all playing with you.
Unfortunately for you, however, I only let men who believe I’m equal to them and who don’t have ulterior motives of “putting me in my place” to spank me. Boo hoo.
And no, not every feeemale secretly wants you to “spank her”. Some (most) of us legitimately don’t want you anywhere near us, let alone putting hands on us.
So, it’s just another way of saying “Corrective [rape],” then.
It looks like r/neofag was an anti-NeoGAF subreddit. NeoGAF is a gaming forums site that’s allegedly anti-GG and run by progressives and left wingers.
The mods did an interview with The Ralph Retort and said they aren’t GGers because they think GG is insufficiently harsh in its rhetoric. They also claimed the admins said someone posted photos of a 16 year old transgender person (which they denied having seen): http://www.donotlink.com/fmv6
@Snowberry
Not sure what brought that up, but yes, you need different words. Most people would consider it immoral to, for instance, enslave an entire ethnic group based on the intuitive personal notion that this will increase the overall utility of society. If you try to define slavery as a moral act based on someone’s gut feeling, you’re not going to get very far with other people who also use the English language.
Yes. I’ve constructed an entire elaborate identity as someone who cares about social justice in the hopes that MRAs would one day create a twitter hashtag that led to them possibly spanking me.
That makes complete and total sense.
“Corrective sexual assault”.
The fact that they feel like “spanking” us for daring to disagree with them only speaks volumes about how much they infantalize women (especially feminists) and see them not as equals, but rather as children they need to control and children they want to fuck, which is worse.
And if we try to speak out about this, all we’re going to get is abuse. Verbal, and possibly physical.
Yup, they sure love women! [/sarcasm]
One other thing I noticed in Miss Andry’s article: Esmay trots out the old turd that “Feminists don’t care about [insert subject Feminists actually do care about here], and that makes them awful people who deserve to be beaten!” Why is it that MRAs feel the need to start screeching the kettle’s black as a means to attempt to make us look bad? It’s getting tiresome. Especially when you realize that this is the entirety of their “argument” for why women (especially feminists) should be beaten.
“Feminists are terrible people who don’t care like we do about all these people! They’re liars because they don’t want equality like we do!
What? Men’s domestic violence shelter? Pshaw, it’s not our job to do that, feminists should be doing it for us if they care so much about men and boys like they claim to!
What? Gay men? Who gives a fuck about those homos? It’s not our job to do anything for them, feminists should be if they care so much!
What? Trans men? Pfft. Feeemales trying to be men! If feminists really did care about all men, they’d be trying to help out with this too!
What? Men of Color? I can’t talk about that, it’ll piss off our white supremacist friends! But if feminists actually did care, they’d do something about it!”
Yes, feminism has problems with intersectionality. Yes, feminists are addressing these issues as we can. Yes, there are queer/Muslim/PoC/transgendered feminists who are helping with these issues. No, we still don’t care about your boner or your male tears.
Pretty much it boils down to them going “Feminists don’t care about anyone other than white women!” out of one side of their mouth, and then going “Why aren’t you dropping everything to work on men’s problems!” out of the other. And occasionally going “We don’t want or need your help, Feminazis! Fuck off!” to further add to the confusion.
@Policy of Madness
As per the (personal) #1 definition given above, what is “moral” is not based on any one individual’s “gut feelings”, but the approach favored by the majority in society regardless of effectiveness or lack thereof. Therefore, if most people do not agree that slavery increases overall utility, then it’s not moral. I specifically defined it that way because there are a great many societies, past and present, which hold/held views which I do not personally feel are moral, but I’m not willing to consider the vast majority of people who ever existed to be actively immoral, even unknowingly. So it denies the relevance of individual feelings, including my own, in favor of collective feelings.
I’m basically defining morality and ethics as active concepts rather than passive ones. Basically, ongoing states brought about by people’s active participation in them. This is part of what makes them different from most people’s ideas of them.
@Snowberry
I don’t know how that’s useful. To say, “Slavery is moral in X society because most people think it increases society’s utility” is, firstly, circular. If you define “moral” as “what a given society thinks is moral” then your definition is a circle. Secondly, this is profoundly unhelpful. Slavery in the United States was contested because a non-trivial percentage of the population decided it wasn’t moral. That percentage was, at the beginning, a fairly small one, but you leave people in that situation with no language to use. “This is unethical” does not carry the same semantic or (dare I say it) moral weight as “this is immoral.” If the majority of Americans thought slavery was fine, and a small group thought it was immoral, you leave that group without the ability to lean on the language of morality.
Why are you not willing to do that?
Feminists spank one another when the mood strikes and it can be tremendous fun. Esme won’t ever know because he’ll never be invited to play. Boundaries are respected and enthusiastic consent is mandatory at a feminist play party. So MRAssholes won’t ever get a chance to spank a feminist. I guess they’ll have to stay home and *cough* spank themselves.
If he means he thinks he can whip a feminist in a debate he’s suffering from delusions of adaquecy again. He couldn’t debate his way out of a wet paper sack.
…Aaaand now we know what Deano wanks to every night before he salutes the picture of Paul Elam he keeps on his night stand and cries himself to sleep.
OK. I’m unwilling to call cat’s mammals. Now neither of us are right.
We’re rising apes, not falling angels.
I lost it at “HamPlanetHatred.” And also “LargePeopleAnimosity.” It’s like a much less endearing version of the creative English constructions my students use here in Japan.
Reading it again, that list makes me giggle because of the implied thought processes. At some point, someone’s inner monologue must have gone something like this:
“They banned fatpeoplehate. So we made fatpeoplehate2. Then that got banned, so we made fatpeoplehate3. Then that got banned, so we made fatpeoplehate4, and fatpeoplehate5 when that got banned. I dunno, what should we do? Start fatpeoplehate6?”
“Maybe we should go for a bigger number. The admins might not be able to count that high.”
“So… fatpeoplehate8?”
“Even bigger than that. Like fatpeoplehate12.”
“That’s amazing! You’re onto something. They’ll never guess. Quick, get on it.”
* * *
“No way, fatpeoplehate12 got shut down. I thought the big number would keep us safe?”
“Yeah, maybe I was wrong. Who knew SJWs could count to two-digit numbers? My idea didn’t work. They’re too cunning.”
“You’re being too harsh on yourself. I think your basic idea is a good one, we just didn’t go far enough. We need to go bigger.”
“Like fatpeoplehate24? Or even higher, like 34?”
“No, even bigger. Far bigger. Three digits. Like… instead of fatpeoplehate15, we go for a hundred and fifteen.”
“Wow. Are there even numbers that high?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“Let’s try it.”
@EJ: everybody knows the biggest number is ninety trillion:
http://www.wfmiconsulting.com/images/1328842916l/1305751.jpg
Does that mean we’ll see an /r/fatpeoplehate90000000000? It’s like Robot9000 but much more so.
@EJ
If they were smart, they’re use l33t.
/r/900000f4Tp30pL3|-|4t300000
That would confuse those SJW. Hehehehehe.
83<4|_|53 5_|x/z /|/3/42 5|*33|< 1337. =P
@SFHC
“Because…SJWs…neva,,,,speak leet!”
I feel like I translated some cuneiform there.