So yesterday someone sent a link to what he said was an FBI report on the manosphere to an excitable Men’s Rights Redditor, who quickly posted it to the Men’s Rights subreddit with the title “‘The manosphere’ is currently being investigated by the FBI, including r/Mensrights!” It got more than 100 upvotes.
If only he had taken three seconds to look at the FIRST PAGE of the supposed FBI report he would have learned that it was not an FBI report at all, but a master’s thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California.
Here, by the way, is the first page of the “report.”
I really don’t know how it could possibly be clearer that this is not an FBI report.
But some other Reddit MRAs who also didn’t look at the first page of the report were duly alarmed.
“Murkkka! Land of the Freee… wait, sorry, I mean Feee-male…. I mean Feminist!” wrote one.
“This is stupid were not hurting anyone just asking for help that is being denied to us but given to women out of men’s and women’s tax dollars,” wrote another.
“Hullo fedbois, get comfy, it’s gonna be depressing,” added still another.
Now, to be fair, a number of commenters did manage to look at the first page of the document and posted comments explaining that it was in fact a master’s thesis. Some even dug into the thesis and offered rudimentary critiques of it.
Ultimately the OP acknowledged that he had made a boo-boo.
Edit: It was just a thesis written by a random student and not the FBI! Thanks for correcting me, guys! A friend had sent this to me and I thought it was legit. I only checked to confirm whether this subreddit was actually mentioned or not. I should have read through it more properly. I‘ll leave it up for a while regardless.
The thread has since been deleted.
Now, it is true that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are investigating the manosphere — mostly the incels, who have this annoying tendency to go out and shoot people. I don’t know if any of them are doing any detailed analysis of r/MensRights, because, well, the FBI doesn’t like to say anything about ongoing investigations.
But guys, do a teensy bit of due diligence before crying that the sky is falling.
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The FBI apparently spied on Aretha Franklin for years, simply for being Black. So the manosphere probably has nothing to worry about.
@Dave
Nah, it was for being black and politically outspoken, same as they did/do (they haven’t stopped) every Black American civil rights activist you’ve ever heard of, plus hundreds more who got less press. They don’t have the personnel to surveil every Black person in the country, much as they might like to.
Psssh, READ?!? What do you think they are, women??? /s
I kid, I kid. incels are too stupid to read.
The FBI *ought to be* spying on the MRAs, but they’re too busy being MRAs. And spying on perfectly innocent PoC just for having melanin coupled with a political opinion.
Not even just Black, or even necessarily American. Buffy Sainte-Marie, a Canadian singer, songwriter, and Aboriginal rights protestor (as well as a regular on Sesame Street for a while) apparently had a pretty significant FBI profile which she only finally got to see decades later, and even after having known she’d been actively blacklisted, she was still surprised on just how thick and obsessive the file on her was.
His post was as well researched as most of the things those guys post, as in not at all, didn’t really read the paper, and relied on someone else to spoon feed him the proper MRA interpretation.
Re: Connecticut defamation trial.
Jury awards $965,000,000 in damages against Alex Jones.
(No cap on punitive damages in CT)
@Jenora Fuer
Oh, for sure Native activists got a lot of attention too. Worse than surveillance, the FBI straight up assassinated Fred Hampton, killed Ray Robinson, Buddy Lamont, and at least one other person at Wounded Knee in ’73, gunned down Ojeida Rios in 2005, and those are just the ones I know of offhand.
@ dalillama:
Yeah, I don’t even f*cks with any movies that show the FBI as heroic! That said they might have at least a few files on some people in the Manosphere.
I hope.
I thought the menz was supposed to be all rational and non-emotional and stuff. That’s why we wimminz should stay in the kitchen instead of making critical decisions and running the world. Pffft.
As a domestic violence counselor once pointed out to me, abusers tend to be paranoid because they know what they’ve done and they fear retaliation.
This Kelly person could be a woman!!1!
Let me get this straight: an MRA hates the KKK? Sorry, that is impossible. Your goals are identical: subdue an individual or a group and keep them subdued for your own perceived benefit.
This MRA, on the other hand, speaks the truth — not least because these guys constantly encourage each other to kill themselves. Depressing? There’s an understatement.
Yes!
Self-Proclaimed Incel Plotted to Murder 3,000 Ohio Sorority WomenTres Genco, 22, faces life in prison if convicted of planning to “slaughter” scores of women “out of hatred, jealousy and revenge.”By Audra Heinrichs
https://jezebel.com/self-proclaimed-incel-plotted-to-murder-3-000-ohio-soro-1849648026
Off topic, but in Arkansas, a school board voted to remove books about trans kids from the library, remove what little protections their district offered (ie forced bathroom outing), and most worryingly, allowed a speaker to say LGBTQ people “deserve death”, without stopping him. Cops stood around and did nothing (of course). The speaker was applauded and thanked afterward.
Can you imagine the uproar if anyone said that about, oh I dunno, CHRISTIANS? Men? White people? Dark times we’re living in. It’s very hard to feel hopeful about anything anymore.
https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/10/watch-a-man-said-lgbtq-people-deserve-death-at-a-school-board-meeting-no-one-stopped-him/
The average MRA wouldn’t know due diligence if it German suplexed him through a table.
If the US really waged a “war on terror”, they would arrest every single one of those dudes for the domestic and stochastic terrorists they are. Unfortunately, “only muslims are terrorists!”, as a coworker once said. Ironically, or rather tragically, directly before the massacre in New Zealand. No, he didn’t change his mind, if anyone actually wondered.
Always funny to watch these “logical males” melt down over the slightest hint of people disagreeing, calling them out on thwir nonsense, or pointing out the dangers in thwir self-injuring behavior, though. I really love it. I’m diagnosed with mental illness since childhood and I’m infinitely more stable than those dudes. Would feel good, if it wasn’t so scary.
@Kat
They may not realise that they have the same goals though. One group wants to turn back the clock on women’s rights and the other one wants to do the same for race relations. Okay, I guess that their goals are pretty similar.
Andrea Dworkin said racial hate manifests as segregation but woman hate manifests as keeping your hate target close.
The jury in the Nicolas Kruz case (the Parkland shooting) have returned their verdict and recommended life in prison.
This was the penalty phase of the trial as he had already pleaded guilty.
The death penalty was an option. But Florida law requires unanimity for that; and according to the jury forms at least one juror found mitigating circumstances and thus the DP cannot be imposed.
Formal sentencing is 1 November. But the only option under FL law is life without the possibility of parole.
Which way do you guys see the 2024 presidential election going? I thought once T was booted out that would be the end of Republican presidencies but now I have my doubts.
As a Black woman who frequents the “new” manosphere – that is the Black Manosphere on Youtube, I see Black men encouraging each other to blindly vote Republican (even if they don’t agree on many of the policies) just to spite Black women like Stacey Abrahms and her supporters. Who knows if it will work, but they sure do talk like it will.
Hey, NPS! I did a postdoc there a few years back. It was a nice place to work and do science.
@ Love is All We Need
I’m not really qualified to comment; although I do think a GOP win is certainly a possibility, and even a Trump second term cannot be ruled out.
I am though very interested in what you say about the stuff you’ve seen on YouTube. That’s an area where I’m zero qualified. But, if you have the time, I’d be very curious to hear more about that and your thoughts.
A cool billion! Good luck ever paying that off, Alex Jones!
Alan Robertshaw, the Black Manosphere blames us Black women for everything wrong in their lives and in the world. #TBMOTH (that means Took The Black Man Out The Home) is a # created by Black women to make fun of their claim that “Welfare took the black man out of the home”. Candance Owens also parrots this tired and false trope. They claim that back in the 1960s Black women literally kicked Black husbands and fathers out of their homes in exchange for a welfare check. So they are hard blaming Democrats, Feminism and Black women for “breaking up the Black family”. Never mind that Feminism never made any real inroads into the Black community and Democrat social workers did not go knocking door to door to offer, “Hey Black woman! Here’s a welfare cheque but you got to kick your husband out before we give it to you”.
For years they’ve been droning on and on and on about “The Moynihan Report” (without reading it) claiming that it “proves” that Black women kicked Black men out of the home for Government Cheese. Then finally Cynthia G read the report online and it proved the opposite. They had to shut their mouths and you haven’t heard peep about “The Moynihan Report” since.
Now their hustle is to get Black men to vote Republican (like that will help them somehow).
@ Love is All We Need
That you ever so much for all that; I really appreciate your time there.
That was all very fascinating. I’ve seen references to stuff like Hotep culture here, and of course there’s all the current talk about Kan(Ye) West. But as a white guy from across the Pond I just didn’t have a frame of reference. So your perspective was especially useful, and welcome.
I hadn’t even heard of that report. I was interested to learn it’s where we get “blaming the victim’ from though.
Once again, thanks for the education.
@ Love is All We Need
I’m seconding Alan. Thank you for educating me.
I thought this guy was probably black. Or he doesn’t realise what the KKK in the middle means. I think that’s just about possible for an MRA.