By David Futrelle
Men’s Rights Redditors are getting their boxer briefs in a twist over news that Wikipedia is now including the Men’s Rights subreddit on their list of “controversial Reddit communities” alongside such names as r/TheRedPill and the toxic pro-Trump subreddit The_Donald.
“Why the fuck is a site like Wikipedia so against us?” a Men’s Rights Redditor called youhavebeenwobbled asks plaintively.
We contain no hate speech or “misogyny,” so why are we painted so poorly in the public eye?
In fact, Wikipedia includes considerable evidence to back up the charge that r/Men’s Rights is controversial, citing in particular the time that the subreddit mods encouraged subreddit readers to dox a random woman they’d mixed up with a troll posting inflammatory material, and the time that Men’s Rights Redditors, in league with 4chan, decided to spam an Occidental College rape reporting website with some 400 false accusations to render the site useless and make some point about false accusations or something.
And anyone who doubts that the Men’s Rights subreddit is lousy with misogyny is invited to scroll their way through the We Hunted the Mammoth archives for countless examples.
Or you could simply look through the r/MensRights thread devoted to this particular controversy itself, filled as it is with denunciations of feminist “cunts,” defenses of the maliciously antifeminist and anti-woman harassment campaign known as GamerGate, and at least one (sarcastic, I hope) call for women to lose the right to vote. Oh, and for some reason there’s also an extended discussion of “white pride” and why it’s not a bad thing, really, if you think about it.
“THE major reason why this sub will never be treated fairly is that feminism seems to be inherently opposed to the idea of men having rights,” complains one MR Redditor called Peter_Principle_.
Feminists attacked an MRA meeting (angry protests, fire alarm pulls, etc.) that was purely about men as survivors of rape. Despicable hatred made real. Feminists are to MRAs as Klan members are to African Americans. You could wave a magic wand and entirely eradicate from current and former existence whatever male (ostensibly) sexist movements you would care to, and the feminists would still hate MRAs and call the movement a hate movemen. The fundamental idea of feminism is that women are universal victims. The MRA as a movement contradicts this ideology, and so it will be attacked by whatever means necessary.
None of that is true, but you go on.
“Wikipedia appointed a board of feminists for curating their pages so as to bring pro women face to wikipedia articles,” asserts perplexedm.
They should’ve opted for a neutral role, but women appeasement identity politics is part of many technical divisions these days.
Now, you see the result.
Youhavebeenwobbled puts his complaint a bit more succinctly: “wiki is full of non free speech soyboys”
And then there are the white prideites.
“If women can have pride … And wear a shirt… men should have pride and get to wear a shirt without any blowback,” says TommySawyer. “Same with black pride and white pride.”
“[W]hite people should be allowed to be proud of their race the same EVERY SINGLE OTHER RACE is,” kahuna55555 declares. “White pride isn’t white supremacy.”
Alas, meanpride adds,
Being proud of your white skin is viewed “negatively” by some, the same way being proud of your masculinity is.
Truly amazing that anyone would consider this subreddit “controversial,” huh?
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Weren’t MRAs declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center a while back, or was that a different group?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!
*looks around for corpses of MRA’s hanging from trees*
Nope.
*looks around for MRA’s only drinking fountains/library sections/restaurants/etc.*
Nope.
*looks around for MRA’s disproportionately represented in the prison system*
Nope.
*looks around for roving carloads of Feminists looking to beat up some MRA’s ass*
Nope, nope aaaaaand nope.
*etc. ad nauseum*
Frankly, “controversial” is one of the nicest things Wikipedia could’ve called them.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/sam.gif
Well, gee, you’re holding the very brushes you tarred yourselves with, so it was kind of a foregone conclusion:
Nope-nope-nope, no misogyny there! Nosirree…
None there, either…
And no phytoestrogenic misogynous dog-whistles there, either…
And certainly no racist or sexist dog-whistling going on there, either.
I’m not hearing anything, but all the dogs on my block just went berserk.
This is worrying, given they’re disciples of Paul “Bash a Violent Bitch Month” Elam…
They’re forever comparing their paper cuts to someone else’s broken leg. To an MRA, mild pushback on their opinions is indistinguishable from terrorism.
Yeah, I guess they’re a controversial group. The controversy is between those who hate women (MRAs and their ilk) and those who don’t.
Well, good. We don’t need to go back 50 years in women’s rights or further, ever.
@Fishy Goat
The idea of a group of feminists gathering in the middle of the night to burn a cross on an MRA’s lawn is absolutely sending me.
I’ve heard several individual misogynists seriously promote disenfranchisement of women. That’s when the trouble started, they say, when women got the vote.
So yes, these bigots want to ban women from voting. They are not at all sarcastic.
If you have to write long screeds defending your noncontroversiality, doesn’t that make you controversial by definition?
Frankly, I’m surprised it took them this long to make the list.
[citation needed]
Where can I find this wand that eradicates sexism?
I’ve never seen anyone referring to “woman pride,” so I’m guessing he’s referring to LGBTQIPA+ pride and women in that group. I’m surprised none of them have brought up straight pride, that seems to be a favorite of the alt-right.
They can whinge about this too I guess.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/19/what-do-female-film-makers-have-to-say-about-male-stories-barbican-her-lens-his-story
@ Talonknife:
gathering in the middle of the night to burn a giant penis on an MRA’s lawn
Fixed that for you…
@ Naglfar:
I was hoping someone had this example, I’d like to see it.
“white, conservative, male, cis, het, xian” is considered the default condition — EVERYTHING is measured in terms of how it affects the default. You don’t get to talk about “women’s rights”, you get to discuss “white, conservative, male, cis, het, xian’s and women’s rights.” You don’t get to discuss “black lives matter”, you get to discuss “white, conservative, male, cis, het, xian and black lives matter”
I find it a little disturbing that instead of going “what the hell, we shouldn’t have misogyny and threats on our forum, let’s fix that”, the response is instead “the feminists are the ones who are bigoted and violent and therefore anything we do to them is justified, in self defense you see“.
I mean, I do know it’s standard operating procedure for these types, but generally the level of violence that this tactic accuses the other side of is approximately the level of violence that they wish to justify for themselves, and feminists are being equated with a group that committed large numbers of murders.
@Weird Eddie
Or if they’re feeling extra charitable, you get to discuss the shorter synonym for “white, conservative, male, cis, het, xian and black lives matter”: “all lives matter.”
Which BTW Pete Buttigieg has said on multiple occasions, just in case people weren’t convinced he’s racist.
re: All Lives Matter;
The default pushback against any discussion of racist policing…
OF COURSE ALL LIVES MATTER… the point is, SOME lives are being devalued by the techniques police use, and the manner in which they are trained to use these techniques. That’s called “organizational racism”
@Weird Eddie
Don’t you dare make me laugh out loud at work! 😀
“Wikipedia appointed a board of feminists”
DID THEY??? Because last *I* heard, Wikipedia banned many women — particularly feminists — from editing or updating Wiki pages. They didn’t like how the womz were calling ‘rape’ ‘rape’ in a film as opposed to calling it ‘hot sex’, if I recall correctly.
But if Wikipedia has truly changed its ways and is now permitting, nay, ENCOURAGING feminists to participate, then I may just start popping back over to Wikipedia again.
@CarrieV
They did that? I knew Facebook banned a bunch of feminist groups for similar, but I didn’t know Wikipedia had as well. Not really surprised, just annoyed.
I haven’t edited Wikipedia much, the most I’ve done was to edit a departed acquaintance’s Wikipedia page after their passing to include their correct birth and death dates.
Anybody else thinking of the difference between men’s and women’s soccer?
@CarrieV
Shame to hear that. Wikipedia is one of the few sources out there that doesn’t lock its relatively comprehensive information behind DRM or a paywall or take advantage of restrictive copyright law and a broken system that rewards only things that can make money. This has enticed me so much I’ve donated to them twice in two years, but partly because of my lack of income, and partly because of this, I shall reconsider.
I knew Wikipedia lacked diversity in its authorship of articles and I saw a video of a write-a-thon by women who were trying to address this but I didn’t know they banned such groups for calling out something problematic.
@ V.P.;
re: men’s and women’s soccer, in the U.S., the only difference I know of is, the women win, while the men don’t qualify….
Is that it?
@Weird Eddie
The women’s team also has a captain with the guts to stand up to Trump. And there was a great video of a Fox News reporter walking into a sports bar in France after the win and fans shouting “Fuck Trump.” So that there is another difference.