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The slogan of the antifeminsts subreddit is “Exposing the truth about Feminism.” But I’ve been poking around in there a bit and all they really “expose” on a regular basis is that a lot of the subredddit regulars can’t tell the difference between real feminism and obvious jokes or trolling.
I mean, here they are convinced that a headline from the satirical site Reductress, a sort of feminist version of The Onion, is both real and very very troubling.
Here’s the original headline, which some obtuse fellow elsewhere has turned into a meme:
The regulars on the antifeminist subreddit, who gave the post 209 upvotes, are outraged on behalf of the imaginary “Vagina.”
“OH BEAUTIFUL, standing up to gender norms and giving a child a life of non stop bullying,” complains the thread-starter itsyaboiphoenixyt.
Commenters take aim at the imaginary mother.
“Child abuse,” comments Invictus_44.
“With a mother like that he’d be bullied his entire school days anyway,” adds crusadeLeader7.
But it’s a commenter called ApatheticHeretic_101 who has the most, er, creative response, asking his fellow antifeminists to imagine “[t]hat moment when you can already see her future as a used up stripper, drunk, coked out and licking the barrel of a gun…”
While a couple of commenters wonder aloud if this could be a joke, none of them take the two seconds necessary to look up the five-year-old Reductress original. (So I had to do it for them.)
Antifeminists subreddit regulars are as inept at recognizing trolls as they are at getting jokes. Yesterday, someone called Pristine-Ad-3387 posted the following screencap under the title “Woke feminism for you.” It got 176 upvotes and generated dozens of oblivious comments.
Not only is this absurd on its face, but a quick look at “Katie’s” apparently abandoned Twitter account reveals her to be a pretty blatantly obvious troll. In one Tweet, she declares that gum chewing is a form of cultural appropriation; in another she “reminds” readers “that ‘poetry’ is just a colonized version of rap.”
In a post on her website, OnlyFeminists.com, she fake-urges parents to keep their kids from playing the video game Animal Crossing because collecting fish and insects for your “museum,” as players do, is basically the same as what the Nazis did to Jews. In case you don’t get that she’s trolling, she includes the following graphic, which you would think would make her trollery so obvious that even a Reddit antifeminist would get it.
But of course the regulars wouldn’t recognize this sort of trollery if it bit them on the nose. And so once again they wax indignant over a joke.
“Woke is so wrong,” writes sgt_oddball_17. “It’s never good to cheat on your partner, ever. This remains true regardless of whether the relationship is M-F, M-M, or F-F.”
europaodin sniffs
Please, by all means cancel the “patriarchal sexiest holiday” I don’t think you’d find many men protesting this idea. Obviously men and women always have more options, it’s the decision to commit to someone that makes it a relationship. I hope this bitch has many lonely holidays in her future, it’s what she deserves.
According to chessto, women like “Katie” are
narcissists, they have probably never been treated badly, more likely they fabricated the idea of them always being a victim, cause that feeds their ego and gives them a scapegoat for their lack of achievements. And to this type of people, happy healthy people are the worse, cause they’re living proof of their own delusion.
When one commenter repeatedly informs the regulars that “Katie” is a troll, they get a host of downvotes for their trouble.
As it turns out, the antifeminist squad is as ready to turn on male jokers as they are on female trolls. Take their reaction to the Twitterer who posted this several days before Valentine’s day, inspiring 476 upvotes from irate antifeminists.
Now, again, a little bit of investigating (i.e., reading a few of his other tweets) makes abundantly clear that he was joking.
The exceedingly literal-minded antifeminist squad didn’t hold back when they launched their assault on the man they thought was serious, declaring him, among other things, a “doormat,” a “loser,” a “simp,” a “”SIMP,” a “disgusting simp” and “Simpy McSimperson.” (They really like the word “simp.”)
Some of the other comments:
If you treat someone like a celebrity, they’ll treat you like fan.
Her rent? What in the Cuck Simp Fuck is this shit?!
Even She has no respect for him.
If one your mates is like this then you have full right to full force slap sense back into them
If this is real, she sounds very controlling and he needs to take his balls out of her handbag
This last comment is one of only two of the 52 total comments to even suggest that the Tweet might be a joke.
We really need to encourage social media literacy. Because this is plain embarrassing, even for antifeminists.
Take a look at the “more posts for you” below for other examples of antifeminists and Men’s RIghts Activists falling for hoaxes.
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This might be a weird thing to think, but I’m kind of disappointed the haven’t eaten in three days Tweet was fake. I mean, it is horrible to think that someone would be in that position, but at the same time, sweet that someone would do that for another. (I say this as someone with no serious medical conditions who could and has gone more than three days without food to no ill effect. Mileage may vary.)
So close!
He just can’t see how perfectly he’s describing himself….
What. I’ve never heard of this philosophy. Sounds all wrong.
Okay, so this guy is an antifeminist. But he is acknowledging that a woman is a deity. I like that in a guy.
I rather like these sorts of posts from Dave.
The way I feel it is recognising that long ago (oh soooo long ago) look of innocent wide-eyed wonder of a 3 yr old literal-minded pre-schooler seeing The Real Santa for the first time at a parade.
That warm glow of the fond parent looking forward to the day the little one catches on to the near universal adult world’s willingness to grant a rosy fantasy for the benefit of littlies everywhere.
The fact that these miserable sods have no idea about kindness or fantasy or humour or adulthood – let alone heartfelt joy – is a genuine loss. For them, and for the rest of us.
Feminists Against Trolls. FAT. You have to be actively deluding yourself to not recognize that as satire.
I wish I could invent my own obstacles that were easy to overcome. But alas, I’m too attached to reality.
@once was magnificent: I saw a little girl meet a “natural Santa” (own beard, hair, wearing red) in a very unexpected place and I’m surprised her eyes didn’t pop out of her head. She thanked him for the presents a few months before, promised to be a good girl, and he gave her cheapo plastic jewelry. It was so heartwarming I shouldn’t have been allowed to see it before breakfast.
We were at a resort, so at her natural puzzlement at seeing Santa out of his regular time and place, I sensibly pointed out “You and your family are here on vacation, so am I, so is Santa! He needs a vacation after all that hard work delivering presents to everyone.” She nodded wisely. Obviously if some nice lady even older than her parents explained it so matter-of-factly, it had to be true. All was right with her world. She then ate breakfast without her previous whining as her mom mouthed “Thank you!” to me.
But she was 3-4, so I don’t know what the miggies’ problem is.
@Kat: Of course women are deities. Just ask our Stacey.
Damn it, I’ve gotta be fair to misogynists now?
I once spent time doing a parody version of a radical right wing evangelical Christian and one thing that I learned then that has only been confirmed by several years of Twitter is that a LOT of people don’t get parody. I don’t know the numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most people don’t get parody.
It is possible that this may be more likely if the parody confirms their already existing biases, but no matter how obvious you think you’re making the parody, there are people who are more than willing to accept it as real. Even when it’s explained to them, so often their response is, “Well it could be real! It’s very much like them!”
I also suspect this is tied to how much they otherize those who are being parodied, which is why so many of these anti-feminists are willing to believe that a mother named her son “Vagina”.
Then there is flipping it around. The reason so many misogynists and racists fail so badly at convincing anyone other than other misogynists and racists when they create non-parody sock puppets is that they believe the nonsense they’ve convinced themselves of so they don’t act like a member of whatever group they’re trying to impersonate.
Also, David, thank you for introducing me to the Jonathan Frakes Beyond Belief meme. I was figuring it was most likely a behind the scenes Star Trek thing, but looked it up and learned stuff.
Speaking of, I got a soft spot for Riker and Deanna getting old, starting a family, and making a life for themselves in Star Trek: Picard. They serve as a contrast to Picard. He left Starfleet and lost his purpose, his family, his meaning. He needed a mission in life. They made their own mission.
I honestly feel like they are a relationship goals type thing. I can relate to Riker and hope one day I’ll be older, grayer, a bit larger around the middle, but living my best life playing chef with a kind woman by my side, maybe a short person or two around, and the odd visit from an old friend… preferably without secretive government agencies following them, but whatever keeps things entertaining I guess.
They think the “Vagina” thing is real??
Also, I don’t know what satirical point “Journalist Katie” is trying to make (like, does anyone say cultural appropriation means eating food from other cultures?) but “Contact our feminists!” is kind of funny.
These guys are just so delusional, they start to believe their own lies and all the over-the-top stereotypes and memes they share, so once those beliefs are firmly ingrained in their heads, they will believe anything that seems to support their world view, no matter how obviously fake it is. Kind of like conspiracy theorists. If they get shown solid proof otherwise, they either say something like “Well, a lot of actual feminazis believe that!! Just because this one was fake doesn’t mean wimmen don’t really act like this!!!” or… they just reject the proof itself as “fake” and keep on altering the facts to fit their own version of the world.
@GSS
That Santa story is so cute!
Sometimes I take issue with how far people will go to perpetuate the Santa fairytale to kids (I’m of the mind that news networks “tracking Santa’s progress” go way too far, for example), but this was really sweet and the kid was still in the proper age range for holiday mythos, so I think you did a good job there.
@Tabby
Spot on. I wonder what it is about people in these groups that makes them so gullible and unquestioning in their beliefs of the most ludicrous things. Well, I can think of one reason, but there’s got to be more to it. In addition to “critical race theory”, we also really need to teach critical thinking and healthy skepticism in schools.
@.45
You never saw the glory that is Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction? until now? You’ve been deprived.
But speaking of skepticism and blind belief, even though I loved watching these and was thrilled to record some reruns a few years ago, I decided I wanted to dig a little deeper and was disappointed to learn that a lot of their so-called “true” stories are all traced to a single source: a book by some random guy, and who even knows what his criteria was? Plus, they listed a few as true that were obviously old urban legends that even as a kid I knew were fake, because some of them sounded as if they were lifted straight out of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books.
I haven’t watched that new show and it’s been forever since I saw more than a couple TNG episodes, but I still have a soft spot for Riker and Deanna too. Their wedding was one of the few highlights of that awful Nemesis movie.
Somebody a few years ago made an amusing super cut of Frakes asking questions in the intros to Beyond Belief: https://youtu.be/9S1EzkRpelY
@QotH: I’m terrible with kids, but I think I called the situation right. Mom was clearly exhausted and at the end of her rope, so Santa’s intervention was very timely, and what could I do but help? Obviously Mom was doing the Santa myth, so I didn’t feel out of place backing that up — and I wasn’t exactly lying because Santa *was* there on vacation not long after Xmas, so he had been working hard recently. I think you’d deserve a resort break after having a couple months of overstimulated little kids sitting on your lap demanding things.
Also, it made MY breakfast nicer without a 3-4 year old whining at the next table, so we all won. Warm fuzzies all around.
@GSS
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I would never tell a kid that Santa wasn’t real myself (my cousin revealed that to me as a kid, same with the tooth fairy, at a fairly early age… I wasn’t upset, but rather disappointed), I just think some people take it a little too far at times. And I think you did the right thing which resulted in the best outcome too. So was the guy really someone who had played Santa earlier in the year or just a guy who looked the part? Maybe I read wrong.
I’m in a weird position where I’m mostly fine with kids (when they’re not screeching or otherwise being excessively loud), but since I spent so much of my own early years, childhood included, taking care of other kids, it means I definitely don’t want any of my own and have a low tolerance for their noise. Plus I just don’t have the energy or patience to keep up with them for very long anymore and they deserve better. I still do enjoy cute stories about them like you just shared. 🙂
@ epitome of incomprehensibility
Some people do. Although others say it’s ok to eat other cultures’ food, but not make it yourself. You should only buy it from people of that culture.
https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/foodie-without-appropriation/
I do find all this a bit fascinating. It’s like the flipside of decolonising diet. And there is an irony. People can fetishise ‘ethnic’ food; whilst western cultural hegemony displaces traditional diet in the original cultures. See for example the effects of NAFTA, or the proliferation of fast food franchises around the world.
I like to eat a common brand of plain yogurt that’s simply named “Bulgarian yogurt” because it’s supposedly based on a fine hand-picked Lactobacillus strain that originated in Bulgaria. I guess that’s one thoroughly appropriated culture (pun intended).
@QotH: He was a “real” Santa. There were several of them (most with their Mrs.) there. Some kind of club for guys with natural Santa accouterments, who do a lot of work in November and December. They were all wearing regular clothes that “just happened” to be red. Which is why he had the patter down and the pocket full of little toys.
I’m the same way about kids. The high-pitched whining and screaming really bothers me (TBF, I don’t like high pitched or loud noises from anything, she said to her cat). And I don’t have the energy either. They’re cute in the abstract, and this one was adorable when she stopped whining. Thank you Santa, for making that breakfast more pleasant for everyone.
@Alan: If I only ate the food of my ancestors, it would be flavorless. I do buy ingredients for “ethnic” cooking from appropriate stores, and now I’m reminded I need to go to the Ethiopian takeout place soon, because ain’t no way I can make injera even if I wanted to. Definitely leaving that to the people who invented it.
@ gss ex-noob
I like to bring up these studies whenever anyone is banging on about ‘paleo’ diets…
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/
Oh my word, I just love Ethiopian food. And yes, injera is amazing. Especially when used to shovel hot and spicy lentils into your gob.
I’m currently on a mission to eat my way around Africa. Basic rule, I have to have at least one national dish of every country. Although speaking of appropriation it turns out Nigerian tapas is a thing. I highly recommend this place; and not just because I know the owners’ cousin so I get mate’s rates.
https://www.chukuslondon.co.uk
@GSS
That makes sense now, thanks for clarifying. How interesting to run across a group of all-natural Santas!
Re: “Culturally appropriating food”
I think it’s a pretty ridiculous notion in general, because food is food and everybody on the planet needs to eat. But at the same time, I can see issues cropping up about “others” taking specialty dishes from other cultures and mangling them while trying to pass it off as “authentic” and making money selling them to people who can’t tell the difference. Which is basically almost every “ethnic” restaurant in America. (Chinese food, Italian, Japanese, basically everything. I bet even hamburgers, but I can’t be arsed to look up a bunch of food history right now.)
I guess my opinion would be that you can go ahead and make/eat whatever the hell you damn well please, but if you’re making money off “authentic” cuisine from another culture (when it’s nothing like the real deal), that’s kinda sketchy at best.