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So Vox — not Vox Day, just Vox — has an interesting and very thorough piece looking at the ways in which misogyny has served as a gateway drug for the alt-right brand of white supremacy. The author, Aja Romano, sent me some questions and quoted me fairly extensively in the piece, mostly about the role Gamergate played in the rise of the alt-right.
Check it out here.
Believe it or not, but I actually had to read the headline in the RSS feed twice.
Regarding the article, I have a bunch of problems (admittedly, not very big ones) with it, and the author’s choice of words. For example, this :
The manuresphere is “male bonding gone haywire” ? That reminds me of “locker room talk”.
This is what I call male bonding gone haywire :
http://www.trendyfest.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/drunk-men-joke.jpg
Or this :
What, these aren’t the same thing anymore now ?
These are just two examples, there’s a bunch more in there that I attribute to the author being a bit clumsy with their words.
It’s not a big problem in itself, but I think we should really be careful with our own words and their meanings, otherwise we may end up unconsciously normalizing fascist rhetoric.
Otherwise, the whole thing is great, I’m just being a meaniepants.
Really interesting article, so true in so many ways. I do take issue with the tweet that claimed that ‘feminist single mothers’ are responsible for so many young men becoming misogynists and through that finding the extreme right.
This seems like a similar argument that the manureosphere puts forth – that feminists have only got ourselves to blame when men become increasingly hostile. I don’t think it is statistically plausible, unless the definition of feminist is any woman who raises children on her own, as a result of divorce, choice, or any other reason.
NO! That would be an absurd definition.
I expect if these guys were to be asked mostly they would be from ordinary backgrounds, not esp political, but probably mostly slightly conservative, and yes, divorce highly likely, certainly NOT progressives of any type.
I am not claiming any specific knowledge, I am simply going by the way these men express themselves, and their attitudes to women and sex.
One more thing – the article did not mention homophobia and transphobia, many of these guys are rabid with. Milo – self proclaimed gay man – stating that transpeople are mentally ill for example.
[I deleted and reposted this to get some more time to track down and fend off the blockquote monster that turned up in it. Here it is again, hoping the beast is indeed vanquished.]
‘kay, this is what I get for posting before realizing I’d somehow managed to unintentionally skip most of the article. It’s worse than I thought. Here are a few ludicrous picks, but honestly the article itself at some points seems pretty off.
This one I’m just gonna leave out here without comment.
Actually, the whole part about RZRtv. The guy makes a few valid points, alright, but come on ! I mean look at this, and bear in mind that the first part is from the author, not the Reddit dude :
You don’t get to write that feminists don’t pay attention to what MRAs say on the same page with an interview with David. Well, I mean, you can if you really want to, but don’t expect me to take it seriously then. But sure, call back when MRAs start actually doing anything meaningful for men’s issues.
Please explain to me what “extreme political correctness” means.
No. Just no. It started as racism and misogyny, and guess what ? It’s still racism and misogyny. Also you’re making it sound like you’re saying SJWs are against male autonomy. I know it’s not what you said. But be careful with the wording, goldurnit.
This is gonna have to do for now, I got a few things to take care of. I’ll get back to it later though. While the article in itself is pretty well-documented and makes a lot of accurate points, there’s some shit in there that’s just dumb.
Ugh. I am the single mother of a son, and I am so sick of being blamed for everything that goes wrong with young men.
His dad chose to walk out of his life, assholes.
Of course the men themselves aren’t responsible, it has to be a woman! Evil ol’ Mommy Dearest!
Fuck you guys, just fuck you.
I’d also like to add: CITATION. FUCKING. NEEDED.
The article sounded like it was trying to be neutral as possible, even about things that both the left and much of the normal-right would find despicable.
Well, if single mothers had only picked a man who wouldn’t have walked out on them, then their man wouldn’t have walked out on them! Is lojick, duh!
… Oedipus has a Twitter account?
(And that is why paragraph breaks exist.)
Yeah, I’m not going to bother reading that crap.
@Snowberry
I’m sure it’s my Shrill Feminazism (TM) that drove the poor man away.
Oh, and I got fat. Wait, I was already fat when he met me – nah, doesn’t matter. A fattie is a fattie, amirite?
So where was I.
So I’m kinda baffled that the author took David’s input on Gamergate only, in the middle of a more general thing about the manosphere. You get an opportunity to ask someone who’s been keeping watch on them for years, really the closest person you could get to a “leading authority” on the subject matter, but you limit that opportunity to just one of its facets ? Oh well.
I mean that’s not that bad in itself, but the problem is that the article is riddled with errors that could’ve been avoided. Hell, the mere fact that I spotted them so easily should demonstrate that.
And there’s the things that are simply missing. The words “fascism/fascist” appear twice in the article.
That’s true. It’s also a hell of a way to worm your way around the word without stating that the alt-right is openly fascist, period. They don’t “align well” with historical fascism. They fucking embrace it, fetishize it.
Okay, that’s slightly better, I guess. Except, actually, no. You’re still saying something in the lines of “it aligns well”. Fucking say it, dammit. They are fascists.
Y’know what other word was scarcely mentioned ? Nazi. Four instances. Two of them are from David, who actually uses it to call out the fuckers. Here are the other two :
C’mon, you can just call ’em nazis, no need to tip-toe around that.
Everything else I can see has been pointed out already.
@dreemr
As the son of a single mom, I need to tell you that you’re awesome. And I’m also fucking sick of each and every one of my many failings being attributed to my mother. Please stay strong and awesome, and give a fist bump to your son for me (he’ll know what it means, it’s a secret code between us children-of-single-mothers).
@Snowberry
Yeah that’s how it comes across to me as well. Apparently “neutrality” is more important to journalistic integrity than, y’know, facts.
HOWEVER, disappointments in the article aside, congratulations David on your increased exposure, and I hope it brings more traffic to the site.
After the article you mentioned yesterday, I wondered: Did you ever dream as a kid that one day you would be an Internet-Famous Expert on Poopyheads?
@Sinkable John – I shall fistbump my offspring, and thank you for making me smile.
Thousends and thousands of young fit ebony muslim men crossing the Strait of Gibraltar every week. No women, no children. They don´t look starved at all but they look sexually starved.
Some remain in Spain and Portugal, most of them cross the Pirineos to rest of the continent.
European women reject local men, they go for the ebony. It is fact.
Of course, European women have the right to shag with whoever they want.
The problem is the single mom epidemic. It seems this African men are not very “hubby material”.
I just hope Euro women to take the pill and always have XXXL size condoms in their purse. Otherwise this is going to be a disaster.
Married Euro women shagging with Sub-Saharians they have to be careful about STDs too, in order not infect hard working Euro hubbies. 🙁
I haven’t read this article yet, but based on the discussion about it here it might be a waste of time. Still, I’d like to congratulate you, David, on getting another interview. I’m glad you’re getting recognition that isn’t all negative.
Dreemr, I’ve always found it odd that there’s so much of a “evil mother/stepmother/female guardian” trope. Obviously, there’s misogyny there. But there are so many stories that include some sort of manipulative, soul-sucking woman who clings to her child(ren). Obviously abusive mothers exist, but nearly everyone I know has has or had an abusive father or stepfather, or at least had some sort of conflict with him. Often times it’s disguised in media as the typical “protective” father. You know, the one that won’t let his daughter make her own decisions or live her own life, but it’s okay because he’s just protecting her.
Yeah, fuck you.
Bottom line, for me, about this article is: I wish David had written it. Nobody is as intimately familiar with the evolution of the manosphere into the so-called alt-right (-osphere) as David is, not even us loyal readers, because I know at least half of us never wade into the muck like David does, day in and day out.
Gamergate was really the beginning of the end of the “manosphere” sticking to complaints about women and feminists. It exploded so far beyond that now, and places like AVFM just couldn’t contain it nor cater to the far more rabid hunger for more targets.
Roosh and RoK has tried but I think he’s barely hanging on by his fingernails. Heartiste never really hid his racism but now he’s letting it all hang out.
It seems like the men of the ‘manosphere’ and gamergate have begun to believe their own purply hype: that they truly ARE temporarily displaced Philospher Kings/Warlords. It somehow got to be not enough to just hate feminists, not enough to just figure out how to date rape/trick women into sex, not enough to mock so-called ‘manginas’ and ‘beta cucks’. Now their hunger to destroy other humans has become voracious, insatiable; there’s seemingly no hatred they shy from embracing. Anti-Semitism, virulent racism, sexism, ableism, there seems to be no hatred too low for them to celebrate.
Shoot, David could write a BOOK about this. I mean, if he had the time and the funds, of course. And a research team to help him collate his years of information. And probably a new computer.
Yes, not only is he getting more recognition but the website is getting more recognition, too. It’ll bring more manospherians and trolls, but it will also bring people who will be educated by what’s here.
@The Last Unicorn
By all means, read it. It’s still worthwhile and informative, even if it’s not perfect. Don’t let our ranting put you off.
You’re right about abusive fathers, by the way. I’m the biological offspring of a particularly smelly shitstain that served as a great example for me (also a great introductory course in Misogyny 101), and I’m THANKFUL that my mother and I were able to get away, but even since then I haven’t met a lot of decent fathers, or a lot of people with a decent father. Sure I’ve met some absolutely amazing ones, but they were the exception, not the rule. Then the reverse goes for mothers. Again, I had a great example from the moment I was born – and I’m glad for that.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the “protective” father thing, too. I think it’s kind of the root of the problem. Fathers are expected to be that particular brand of asshole, and it’s glorified all over the place too. On the other hand, mothers are expected to care, clean and cook, and that’s about it. God forbid they teach you anything. My mother was called abusive for… buying me books (because I wanted ’em, not because she wanted me to read) and letting me read all the time. Apparently that was super harmful to my development as a 5 yr old. I guess the harm became apparent when I started writing at age 7 – 8, and still haven’t stopped at age 24 ?
Can’t you see how she broke my mind beyond repair ?
@Jack
Ehh, chew-toys. At any rate, they’ll be confined to moderation limbo until David lets ’em through. We probably wouldn’t even notice a difference. If I could just lie awake at night wondering about things, I’d probably wonder about the kind of oozing slime that we never hear about but that David has to read through on a regular basis to decide whether to let out of moderation… Scary.
Part of me is curious what the worst of the worst is but considering sometimes I can’t read the stuff he pulls out to mock from the moderation filters as it is, I know it’s nothing I wanna read.
But I’m also curious.
But I probably can’t read it.
It’s conflicting.
@Jack
When you stare into the moderation filter… a lot of stupid stares back at you.
Going by my experience as a mod, I’m going to guess “An endless stream of Goatse, porn and dead kids.”
(And that’s on Pokemon fan forums… The Internet is a wonderful place.)
http://68.media.tumblr.com/0adc8893a26ebbddda94f32a0ca7e3bf/tumblr_mhrquje08N1s5p5xno1_250.png
For that “single feminist moms” tweet – when you look at the whole series (many were left out of the article), a bigger focus was put on how dudes were told to keep their support of Trump hidden from their more progressive family members, contributing to the big “what.” on election day. So when I first saw the series I read that tweet more as “these young men were radicalized despite having feminist mothers, who they were encouraged to hide their Trump support from.” I may be wrong though! Single moms get shit on a lot, and I can definitely see how it could be read as disparaging.
@SFHC
I don’t wanna know imagine what the dedicated-antifeminist-douchecanoe version of that would be. I’ma stop asking questions now. *shivers*
I used to be a mod on an MMORPG fansite & forum, something like 9 or 10 years ago. And then later, briefly, on the official forum. But somehow I never had to deal with that kind of stuff. I’m really feeling lucky right now. Teenage me probably couldn’t have dealt with that shit.
@dlouwe
That’s how I interpreted it at first, but the feminist single mom is part of every MRA’s imaginary backstory so I’m not sure who’s gonna actually believe it, and the tweet is weirdly worded like it actually implies that their mothers are somehow responsible for how shitty they became. Or, alternatively, that the lack of a father is what made them shitty.
All in all, much clumsy in all that.