By David Futrelle
Reductress, if you don’t already know, is kind of a feminist Onion, poking gentle fun at women’s magazines, clickbaity “inspirational” web sites aimed at women, and the feminism-ultra-lite that permeates women’s media generally. Gleefully absurdist, its headlines (and the news stories that accompany them) are easily spotted as the parodies they are.
These are the sorts of headlines you’ll find there on any given day:
So yeah, pretty obviously NOT REAL HEADLINES.
At least obvious to most people. Not so much when the people in question are proud Men Going Their Own Way and the headline involves vaginas. Last year, you see, Reductress posted a fake story titled “Wow! This Woman Stood Up to Gender Norms By Naming Her Son ‘Vagina,’” and MGTOWs lost their shit.
The mod of one MGTOW page on Facebook posted this a couple of months ago, with the lovely caption “C*NT…feminists HATE MEN. #MGTOW”
Naturally, other dudes chimed in with their similarly furious takes on this terrible injustice to the poor (imaginary ) child and men in general.
Now there were a few commenters wise enough to realize that the headline was probably a joke; several even pointed out that Reductress is a satire site. But that didn’t stop the assembled angry dudes from raging, and raging, and raging some more.
These aren’t cherry-picked comments; these are almost all of the comments in the thread, minus a handful that were boring or redundant.
Antifeminsits love to mock feminists as easily outraged, humorless “snowflakes.” But, seriously, hell hath no fury like a MGTOW who doesn’t get the joke. And they never get the joke.
To be fair there are people who give their kids really odd names. You can find some real winners on The Utah Baby Namer, such as a girl name VulvaMae. But the other material on Reductress should make it obvious the site is a parody.
I rolled my eyes so hard they’re stuck. O.o
The WHOOSHING sound is the joke going over their collective heads.
I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising if people with extreme views have difficulty recognising satire. If, for example, you believe that all women are subhuman, you clearly have trouble telling the difference between fact and fiction, so satire is going to be a minefield for you.
Hadn’t heard of this site before. Thanks miggytoes!
I particularly liked this article, which relates strongly to what we discuss here:
http://reductress.com/post/man-offended-by-other-people-being-offended/
Men just don’t understand humour, I guess.
@Tabby Lavalamp
That’s why we think women aren’t funny and we are.
@David
Thanks for introducing me to Reductress!
I hadn’t planned on having children, but now I think I should. If it’s a boy, BetaMangina, if it’s a girl, Misandrica.
Or just Andrica. Ms. Andrica.
Men just aren’t funny.
“It’s a satirical site. This isn’t actually true.”
“STILL, women are blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”
A few years ago I (and a bunch of others) encountered a real specimen at Reductress’s story, “I’m a Feminist Because I Fart on Dicks in the Club” {reductress.com/post/im-a-feminist-because-i-fart-on-dicks-in-the-club/}.
I believe his name was Jason, and he did all the MGTOW moves: Strawmwen, Sealioning, WhatAboutisms, demands to provide him copious, peer-reviewed studies as “proof” that women are (or ever have been) treated less well than men, and so on.
OMFG, I generally know when to chuckle at a chucklehead and call it a night, but that guy was like the worst chigger stuck in my sock. I couldn’t stop responding until he understood… Spoiler Alert: he never understood.
The water one also made me laugh. And this – the pacing and tone were spot-on – http://reductress.com/post/woops-this-black-woman-mentioned-edge-control-and-now-her-white-friends-think-shes-into-freaky-sex/
About that “Manicures” headline – I guess “handy” is short for hand job, but I haven’t seen it written like that before. In Germany (according to someone I know), “handy” is slang for a cell phone, so… some potential for awkward mistranslation? 😛
@ epitome
Over here ‘shiner’ is a, rather old, term for a black eye. It’s also youth slang for blow job. That did lead to some amusing confusion in a trial resulting in the judge asking a witness “Are you claiming your girlfriend hit you?”
@Alan, epitome
I had no idea ‘hummer’ meant anything other than an off-road vehicle until well into adulthood.
@Victorious Parasol,
I hope you’re still reading – I’ve been wanting to catch you! My Barbara Hambly books finally arrived! I looked everywhere for them and finally had to get them from Amazon (had a nice long convo with the delivery guy about Amazon working conditions).
I got the first James Asher one (secondhand, hardback), and the first Benjamin January one.
Thanks for recommending Hambly – it was ages ago, so you may have forgotten 🙂
Oops, sorry everyone for extremely OT post!
Reductress is fab and I can’t believe I didn’t know about it. Miggies are silly.
Also, imagine if the story was that a woman had named her baby girl Vagina. I bet the migs would either not care at all, or think it was hilarious.
Would they be O.K. if she named him Dick?
Wait, there’s something not quite right about that……..
@Mish
Oh, cool! What do you think of James Asher?
To stay on topic here, yeah, there’s a surplus of fragile feelings on the MGTOW side. But of course, since it’s THEIR feelings, it’s a DIFFERENT kind of special.
@VP,
I’ve been trying so hard not to start reading yet (still in exam marking period) – but I caved this morning and read the first few pages. Bad move because now I just want to binge on the whole thing! I don’t know if I would have come across her on my own, so I’m in your debt 🙂
@Mish
Oh, that’s great. 🙂 I love introducing people to my favorite writers.
Hey Mish and Parasol, if you guys are into fantasy books I have been rereading a lot of them plus my new ones that are always arriving from Amazon because I preorder all my faves. I love turning people onto new books so here’s a list of 10 books that I think all fantasy fans should read I’m going to skip Game of Thrones cuz everyone who wants to read it has LOL.
I’m going to go with some really well-known ones and some that have really strong niche followings but are overall underrated in my opinion and deserve more readers. If anyone has read any of the books I list I’d love it if they gave their opinion on any of them.
1 Name of the Wind and sequels by Patrick Rothfuss. 2 The Lies of Locke Lamora and the following books in the series by Scott Lynch. CS Friedman either the Coldfire trilogy if you want a male protagonist, or the Magister Trilogy if you want a female protagonist. 4 the Kushiel Saga, two trilogies by Jacqueline Carey. 5 The Stormlight Archive Saga by Brandon Sanderson. His other stuff is good too but this series is by far his best work by leaps and bounds. 6 Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown. This is in the dystopian style popularized by The Hunger Games, but it utterly transcends it. This is the best young adult trilogy I’ve read in years. 7 The Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop. 8 The Fifth Season trilogy by NK Jemisin. It truly deserves all the hype in my opinion. The Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks. 10 The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. Honorable mention to Marion Zimmer Bradley with Mists of Avalon which most people here have probably read but a lot of people who read that have not read her Darkover books which are really good too. Also the Emperor’s Blades Trilogy by Brian Staveley. Okay I’m going to sleep have a great weekend all
Thirding the love for Barbara Hambly – she’s a fantastic writer.
[Cn: mention of rape]
@Katiekitten420
I’ve read some of the entries on your list (thank you for sharing! ?), I must agree wholeheartedly with a few… everything written by NK Jemisin is a must read, i really loved “The Coldfire Trilogy”. I also really liked the Kushiels Dart series, fyi i think she has a third trilogy too! I like the Stormlight series enough to keep reading it, I really enjoy everything I’ve read of Sanderson’s, I particularly liked his spin on the superhero genre, The Reckoners series.
This is not meant as an attack on you at all, but I’ve seen the Patrick Rothfuss books come up on so many people’s Best Of fantasy lists and I’m just.. why? It was enjoyable at first but it just got so incredibly tedious for me. The main character just got more and more unlikable as the story went on, and he just ended up coming across as a very overconfident Nice Guy. For example:
At one point in the second novel, the main character goes on a pointless side quest to rescue some damsels in distress from a group of men who were planning on raping them…
Somehow he single handedly rescued these damsels and as he’s literally riding off into the sunset with them, one of them says that as a result of being kidnapped and almost raped by these dudes, that she now distrusts men. To which the main character replies,
“Not ALL men!”
I just about threw the book across the room. It’s been several years since I read the book, so I might not have the details right, but he definitely said Notallmen. My hero /s
In the last couple years, I’ve made a point to avoid books written by (white) men, because for the most part, male authors either do not write female or NB main characters at all, or they do so so poorly I’m instantly taken out of the fantasy. I like feeling represented in the scifi and fantasy I read, and I’ve really fallen in love with works by Kameron Hurley, Nnedi Okorafor, NK Jemisin, Tomi Adeyemi, Octavia Butler, RF Kuang, Ursula K LeGuin.
I cannot recommend Kameron Hurley enough. She writes more sci-fi, but her Mirror Empire series is fantasy and its super dark and so so so good. Her standalone novel, The Stars Are Legion, is a total reinvention of the space opera plus a combination of body horror and mystery thriller. I’m currently reading the Bel Dame Apocrypha, which she describes as “bugpunk”. Love!
If anyone has any women/queer/NB etc recs for scifi/fantasy I’d love to know 🙂 sorry for the wall of text…
@The Adjunct
Have you read any Martha Wells? For fantasy, try her Death of the Necromancer, or her Raksura stories. For SF, try her Murderbot novellas – two are out, and two more will be released this year. City of Bones is a sort of mix: the novel is post-apocalyptic, but there’s an odd mix of fantasy and SF going on.
If you’re interested in gender presentation/dynamics, her Raksura stories and Murderbot novellas both include themes along those lines.