By David Futrelle
The Daily Mail is famous for its uniquely British mixture of judgy prurience and good old-fashioned xenophobia. So naturally the comments section of its online edition is home to some of the worst takes the internet has to offer.
The other day I was introduced to a Twitter account that catalogs the worst of these terrible takes. Specifically, to this tweet, which I obviously needed to share with you all:
Bad science and racism, two terrible tastes that taste extra terrible together! And the misspelling of “testosterone” as “tostesterone” is … chef’s kiss!
Also, I’m pretty sure most French people aren’t vegan.
But this tweet is only the top of the iceberg. Here are some other, well, illuminating insights on assorted gender-related issues that The DM Reporter has plucked from the vast wasteland of the Daily Mail comments.
This final tweet really doesn’t have anything to do with gender but I feel sort of bad for the Daily Mail’s Russian Misery correspondent
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The only people debating this are people who don’t consider women to be fully human.
>>>>The only people debating this are people who don’t consider women to be fully human.
Look on the bright side: it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever be in a position to pleasure, or fail to pleasure, any woman.
I’m struggling with how to respond to Ingmar’s post, because I feel like they are saying “John was polite, why was he banned? We need to listen to the other side.”
I would counter that he wasn’t actually polite. He engaged in a very strange way, and once it was obvious that whatever positions he was spouting were thouroughly discredited, he would disappear, only to turn up later in another thread.
He said that women ‘provoke’ men into physical violence, and then didn’t understand why what he thought was a strongly worded denial of acceptability of domestic violence wasn’t accepted.
He would use terms and ideas that are straight up alt-right/manosphere (is there a difference now?), and when called on it, would not engage at all.
I think I can sum up my feelings best by saying: You don’t get a cookie for being a decent human being. I mean, that’s good, and it’s good for you and everyone else that you are, but it isn’t praise worthy.
Coming into a space where everyone is already very familiar with the alt-right etc and basically making us do hand holding 101 level stuff again and again isn’t helping *us* understand anything better…
And like, I don’t want to say “Oh there isn’t anything to be learned from the people who were on other side!”
But I’m also tired of hearing about rural white people with economic anxiety as well.
We know. We don’t need a devil’s advocate, we already know.
Also, polite words don’t negate the meaning of the words you use. ‘hen-pecked’, ‘provoked’ and others really showed that while he was on the way out of that hell hole (I hope! Good luck!) he was still climbing, with unexamined biases.
*shrug*
I’m not exactly sad he’s banned, because he was very much upsetting some people, and I value their participation more than his.
Ultimately, that’s what it comes down to. Who do I want to hear from? Who do I want the community to protect? A man coming out of the alt-right, or the people the alt-right hurt?
Plus, we’re not for free therapists that are required to help and listen to someone who is leaving the manosphere.
If individual people here want to help those guys, totally fine. But no one should come into a space that is about opposing the manosphere and expect us to roll out the red carpet when they’re espousing harmful views either. We have every right to push back.
Ok, I was just curious of your reasons and I can see them, I also sensed something odd about the way he engaged. I wasn’t however hinting in any way about him being owed education and moral labor efforts from you.
I mentioned before that about “provoking” being a very bad framing in domestic violence, so I agree on that, it’s often used by the abuser themself and blurs the line between abuser and abused. He might have been meaning abuse, but don’t take me for devil advocate on that :).
My whole premise was of course against giving cookies and praise for being a decent person and other nice guy syndromes, of course. I thought of a middle way between that and ban, which involved calling him out on his view, see if he was willing to correct or explain or doubling down instead. But that’s my idea.
Definitely, it was right to call him out, my only doubt was that he seemed willing to correct. The problem is the usual edgy tough guy doubling down, (to rp et al lurkers, not that some women aren’t also like that, but gender norms encourage it on men) Desperate Ambrose seemed to get away with much more before banning. I respect your decision though, as I might not be aware of the discomfort he created, I know intentions are not magic, but I always welcome change.
And Anon says he’s a Trump supporter but a sort of feminist and polite ones, but how about the extremist bigot groups with which he explicitly flirts, the Bannon project on upthrowing progress in Europe, his treatment of transpeople, banning them and their medication from army on the ground of “cost cuts”, his erasure of gender on medical lexicon https://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/transgender-rights/trump-administration-trying-erase-trans-people-law-clearly
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/25/health/hhs-transgender-protections-bn/index.html
My idea is, we should talk with them, but the effort should be reciprocal, there’s a problem in society, if so many of them fall for a con man who gives them a scapegoat and rile them against people just on the ground of having inclusive views and therefore “elite” for not respecting traditions and not caring about their problems, while the ones who appease their tradition and popular wisdom are those who really favour and aggraved the already huge wealth gap.
We did do that, though.
@Ingmar – We did that SO MUCH. And I think if Anonymous (the trump supporter) had been in this thread, they would have been banned as well.
Did you not see us engaging with John? Do I need to go and find all of my long posts dissecting what he said, and why things about it weren’t the best and how they could be changed???
Do you think this is a new idea???
ETA: Also all the lols @ any effort being reciprocal. It never will be, because the ideas often go from “I believe every human deserves human rights” on one side to “I believe only some humans deserve human rights” on the other.
Find a compromise there that doesn’t literally kill people, I dare you.
I did call him out. I told him why saying provoke was bullshit and gave an example from my own abuse about it. He doubled down and basically said “but that’s not real provoking if all you did was wear your hair down” which is also bullshit. And if you tell me I wasn’t polite enough and that’s why he did it you can go fuck yourself because I don’t and I won’t be polite to someone who puts the fault on the abused when their abuser hurts them.
I didn’t call for a ban, that was David’s call.
I am totally comfortable with banning people who may not be verifiably the absolute worst that humanity has to offer. I don’t think being banned from this one website is so severe a consequence that it must be reserved for only the most dire of circumstances.
No, don’t worry, yeah, I always do that before sharing an opinion, but I surely might have missed something.
For example looking back at this
Indeed he might be insinuating with “for this space”, “this space of touchy sjw feminazis”
and the part about it being inevitable between men another dogwhistle to allude to the usual fallacious idea that “see feminist hold women to another standard”, plus the other really “mysandrist” implication that men would necessarily react with violence, are agressive etc.
I admit he has been very subtle. You’d also say he sort of double down but quite subtly and indirectly, unlike other trolls.
It’s fine, thanks. And sorry if I might have bothered, in case. Indeed I have also seen some disagreement, which on some criteria have been discussed and clarified, while trolls often lack this good faith premise and often play victim of echo chamber and not being allowed the least dissent, etc.
QFT
@Ingmar… I’m not sure what exactly you’re saying, I’m sorry.
Ok, I clarify with this I don’t refer to John, but the discussion in the other thread about the sinagogue attack, pointing out there’s some antisemitism problem in part of the left, there have been a misunderstanding at first and sounded like implying any criticism of Isreal politics was antisemitism, but that has been cleared out and have been a productive discussion.
Btw some left borderline antisemitism might be found on “tankies”, like stalinists and “nazbol”, some times called “red-browns”, which include moonbats (I correct if ableist as I know “wingnut” is) who think progressivism is counter revolutionary and are against feminism and immigration, in short.
So
I definitely agree, it was actually mainly aimed at those, also on left, who want and want you to be “Pc” and respectful of bigot people and want all the effort of respect on your part, while excusing them all bigotry on the ground of lack of education and economical hardship, which, as said, while it might be part of a contributing cause (i think hardly anyone is born with such views, they acquire them), it doesn’t excuse them for holding them, which ironically is what they strawman the left or “liberals” as doing with immigrants and minority.
@Lainy
I agree with you, and never said you wasn’t polite or that you should have been with him. Sure I could fuck off if I ever implied that.
I saw that and the exchange. Sure it’d be bullshit. If and I mean if, though, he meant his Gf was being abusive and if she was, – and then provoking wouldn’t have been the right word, sure- he could have meant to say that wearing your hair down doesn’t costitute abuse and he was clearly the one controlling, maniacally jealous and vessating you, there, and hence it was possibly not analog to what she was doing to him, for making him angry.
Except of course that in your case the abuse was him controlling and hitting you, in his case it wasn’t physical, he didn’t go in detail to describe the situation, but he was the one who felt like responding in a phisically violent way to a non phyisically violent abuse he called provocation, nevertheless it could have been abuse, he should have called it like that. He seemed to really have trouble understanding that the problem was him calling verbal abuse provoking, but probably got confused by the fact you brought up your story.
As in your case he was the abuser, hitting you for wearing your hair down, but you likened what you did, which was seen by that beast as provocation that warrented violence, with what she’s done to him.
From what I understood, and it’s one of the things I appreciate the most of this community, is giving support to victims of abusive relationship, including but not limited to physical violence, manipulation, gaslighting, etc, and regardless of gender, knowing some women can be as well, which might have been his case.
Going back, that subject appeared out of the blue deriving from you calling him out on “henpecked” to which he replied sharing what could have been an abusive relationship and how he got tempted to use violence but didn’t because it’s wrong to hit a woman.
You are tell that explicitly in this thread, if anyone had a doubt of double standard.
So with John, could have been more akin to, example, you feeling violent in reaction to repeated abuse, or wishing him harm, though we can agree
Not about being henpecked
Lainy said:
I didn’t see this from him, in that same page, and yeah, sounds odd paternalistic and annoying
because it would also indirectly imply that women would know their place if they weren’t protected and as if the current state is a gentle concession, also a manosphere point. The thing about divorce ra
Then he sounded like justifying “dread” before, indeed, the whole “gaming” to maintain attraction.
More back on the thread
wwth
April 30, 2019 at 3:43 pm
Well, my bad, he was responding to me :), as I mentioned to him that could have been his confidence, possibly feeling sexier and put together that made him get laid more, than “performative masculinity” and he admitted that they recruit men on that insecurity.
I’m very sorry if I ever come across nitpicky about this, not my intention and just sharing some considerations, sincere minor concerns (not concern trolling, I swear) if not welcome I stop with this, but I let you know I’m on your side and I felt like I owed an explanation, especially to Lainy.
Edit: I take most of this back, now that I’m looking harder he was terrible in that discussion, from divorce rape, to being tempted to use violence because women “hen peck”, having non committed sex because supposedly deeper relationships put him in “legal jeopardy”, specifying “younger women”. That explains the reaction here much better :).
See you soon.
Many of us called him out, over at least a couple different threads I believe (although I might be confusing things right now, I have had an insanely awful week and my brain has temporarily turned to mush.)
We’ve been calling out some very suspiciously similar trolls a lot recently, in fact.
This seems relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/03/death-of-debate-jordan-peterson-slavoj-zizek-alexandria-ocasio-cortez
The TL;DR version is that debating is a terrible idea, because it has a structural bias in favor of liars, bullies, and trolls, so you might as well just not engage with them at all.
I agree, though not sure the debates themselves are the problems, but seeing them as a match, as the article despises.
The bigots saying “debate me” create that toxic framing for which they then paint the other side as coward or having no arguments, having lost and on internet culture, pwned, more recently rekt, which is pathetic and thought terminating.
Youtube video of “sjw destroyed”, etc.
I also noticed a version, “fight me”, which illustrates literally this mindset, showing that they are going for great lengths to spout memes and misuse crime statistics, Qi etc as memes to prove themselves right.
As an aside
Guardian said
is there such a thing, the two words would be an oxymoron even in the same sentence, let alone associated :D? Guess it’s like anarcho capitalism, but even less sensible. And by his own admission Bannon is explicitly authoritarian, where did they get anything anarcho from him?
There’s also a language problem, confront ideas might indicate comparing, but confrontation is a word that has adversarial and anthagonistic componends by default, almost synomym of challenge, instead of calmly comparing ideas :).
For example, should we debate this?
:large
summary: IQ, race and the best jobs.
The problem is, they are convinced this is hard data ineluctably leading to that conclusion, that this is alternative fact rebeling the political correctness, and being offended prove it right right even more, according to them, because “facts don’t care about feelings” and the usual. Are we obliged to debate such blatant bunk?
Dave, I can’t understand Lana Chambers on twitter, is she trying to troll you?
Trying to sound deliberately obtuse here.
https://twitter.com/DavidFutrelle/status/1056732023367311360
https://twitter.com/DavidFutrelle/status/1124734966703763457
Can’t understand if her twitter is satire. As not sure what she mocks, she pretends to play a strawman feminist who hates whites because she worships bbc not the channel :D. Which incidentally is in topic.
She Retweeted you and this https://twitter.com/Phyrra1/status/1124499015868059648 (nsfw penis comparison drawings)
This sounds satire, cause not sure if it works like that, lol.