We Hunted the Mammoth is BACK from its hiatus. Only we’re looking a bit different, because now we’re a misogyny-busting YouTube channel instead of a blog. Yep, WHTM has awoken from uneasy dreams to find itself transformed in its bed into a gigantic insect. By which I mean a pretty butterfly rather than a dung beetle.
If you liked the original blog you can expect more of the same Mammothy goodness, as we take apart everyone from incels to dating coaches. Expect a little less of a focus on the denizens of the manosphere and a broader focus on the ways in which red pill misogyny and creepy transphobia have spread into wider cultural discussions on YouTube and elsewhere. Plus, now I can use weird filters and sound effects.
When I put the blog on hiatus, I really needed a break from tracking the manosphere–and from daily blogging. But it’s been more than a year, and now I’m itching to get back on the misogyny beat. And really looking forward to making videos, though it may take me a little while to get the hang of it. The more positive way to frame this is that my upcoming videos will be a lot better than the slightly awkward one I pasted in above. I’ll be putting up new videos roughly once a week, though my next one may go up sooner than that. I’ll be posting the videos here as well as on YouTube itself, and if you’re inclined to offer some comments you can do that here or on YouTube, whichever feels most comfortable for you. I miss you! Please let me know what you’ve been up to over the last year, or if you have any video ideas or requests for me. Or anything else you want to comment about.
Also, I have finally at long last done the maintenance that I needed to do on the blog archives, so all the thousands of old posts I’ve done over the year are available again.
So hello again, from the (entirely imaginary) WHTM doomsday bunker. This should be fun.
Yes!!!!!!
I totally understood the need for the brezk, but was worried that the site archives would be down forever! So glad it’s not the case! Yaaaaaaay
Welcome back, David! You have been missed.
@FMO: Just create a throwaway Youtube account, upload it, check back in a week, and see who generated the copyright strike and took it down. 🙂
@all: Is anyone in contact with Yutolia?
@Surplus to Requirements: I’ve seen Yutolia at Fundies Say the Darndest Things. Crip Dyke has a substack called Pervert Justice (same name as her largely abandoned Freethought Blog), if you care about her. I rarely read either and don’t post either of those places so it would feel wrong to sign up just to DM them out of the blue, which is why I haven’t done that. Haven’t seen anyone else.
How recently?
I last read FSTDT about 2 weeks ago, I think? Yutolia seems to be a regular commenter there. I’m about 95% certain it’s the same person.
If David Futrelle is making videos, then there’d better be cats.
Creepy incel GOP VP candidate can’t stop, won’t stop stepping on rakes:
https://www.alternet.org/jd-vance-olympics/
What’s next? Probably saying something that gets the Swifties and the Beyhive to unite … against him. Get the popcorn, it’s going to be an entertaining next three months.
Is a David! Is back! 😀
\o/
(I’m ASSuming someone on the Mammoth Discord is letting Alan know WHTM is back in action. From what I understand RL is munching on him something fierce so he may not be checking in for a bit.)
Yay!!!
@Surplus to Requirements:
Creepy incel GOP VP candidate can’t stop, won’t stop stepping on rakes:
https://www.alternet.org/jd-vance-olympics/
What’s next? Probably saying something that gets the Swifties and the Beyhive to unite … against him. Get the popcorn, it’s going to be an entertaining next three months.
It was precisely because Biles recognized that she needed to take a break to heal, rather than allowing herself to be treated as an expendable resource, that she was in condition to lead the U.S. women’s team to Olympic gold this year. (And, of course, because she’s just that damn good.)
@Full Metal Ox
Biles is so good that she can perform maneuvers other gymnasts shouldn’t even think about trying. When she realized she was suffering from “the twisties,” she knew that stepping away was the safest thing to do, which didn’t go over well with the armchair jocks who think you should just push through difficulties no matter what.
The Swifties, the Beyhive, and the K-pop ARMY are already mobilizing. Swifties are building great GOTV opportunities in concert (pun intended) with Swift’s latest tour. And now Megan Thee Stallion has appeared at a Kamala Harris rally.
But early on, we saw the Divine 9 (that’s the 9 oldest Black fraternities and sororities) announcing a joint GOTV operation across all their chapters, both collegiate and alumni. That’s no guarantee of a Democratic victory, but Trump’s weak spot has historically been his pitiful GOTV game. He’d rather his campaign spend the money on rallies and goodies.
@Redsilkphoenix it’s been mentioned on there, but I don’t think Alan participates on that server anymore. But I did see a comment on the YT video claiming to be him, so seems he got the memo somehow.
@kupo
That handle is Alan’s YT channel where he talks about law stuff, so yep, I’d believe it’s him.
I don’t have much to say, so great. Glad to see things are returning and some familiar names are still around
Desperate to take back the slimelight from running mate Vance, Trump attends a Black journalism press event and steps on all the rakes:
https://www.alternet.org/trump-black-journalist-convention/
The Drumpster Fire’s Fun Faux Facts keep right on coming: Vice-President Harris suddenly decided she was Black when it became politically expedient:
Intersectionality seems to be having a moment:
https://www.vox.com/culture/364410/kamala-harris-white-people-zooms-race-intersectionality-crenshaw
But will it last?
So long as people are posting about recent things: Ovarit (A Reddit clone for TERF/GC types) is getting real weird about Olympic athletes lately. They’ve been doing “investigations” into which women are intersex or “might be intersex based on their appearance” and declaring them to be not real women but rather “defective men” and should therefore be required to participate in sports as men. Caster Semenya seems to be the main target here, due to having confirmed XY chromosomes, but Cathy Ledecky and Imane Khelif also get mentioned, as well as occasional other names I haven’t heard of (I am not watching the Olympics).
Big big thanks to @kupo for the heads-up, and welcome back David! This is the best news I’ve seen in ages.
Love the glam bunker 🙂
Anyone interested in the Olympics and women being accused of being insufficiently female should read up on Helen Stephens and Stella Walsh (born Stanisława Walasiewicz). They were rivals in the 1936 Olympics – y’know, the one held in Berlin where Hitler had to watch Jesse Owens win despite all the efforts to cheat him out of victory.
Helen Stephens, dubbed the Fulton Flash and the Missouri Express after her hometown and state, was a farm girl who excelled in track and field. (As an FYI, when she participated in the Senior Olympics decades later, she was only 4 seconds behind her Olympic gold-medal time. Did I mention her Olympic record was only broken about 30 years later by Wilma Rudolph? Helen was swift.) She was so good, Hitler requested a meeting with her, groped her, and tried to get her to stay in Germany. Farm Girl declined. Not many people can say they did that, especially at the age of 19.
Helen Stephens was forced to undergo a physical examination to prove she was female. She was indeed cis, but she was also a lesbian, so her post-Olympic career took a hit. Here’s the kicker: Years later, Stella Walsh was killed during an armed robbery, and the postmortem exam showed she was intersex.
Helen Stephens, in an interview I read in the 1980s, handled the matter pretty tactfully. She didn’t trash-talk Stella Walsh at all – the quote I remember is “Let’s just say she had a birth defect and leave it at that.” We have a broader vocabulary now to describe intersex people, but I think Helen Stephens displayed good sportsmanship, as an Olympian should.
This seems apropos:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pervertjustice/2022/08/18/that-female-athlete-doesnt-look-feminine-enough/
Given how many cis athletes have been subjected to malicious rumors and even invasive tests, including two of the boxers in this year’s Olympics, it even seems prophetic. In their case, there is even evidence that it is Russian state-sponsored disinformation.
Also, it’s funny you should mention swift. Check out Keely Hodgkinson, who today just breezed through the women’s 800m semifinal, staying comfortably in the lead the whole time and not looking like she had to make much of an effort. (I’m a bit puzzled that she did it in a swimsuit rather than the usual shorts-and-a-tank-or-halter-top combo for runners, though.) None of the others in all three semifinals did that; they all looked like they were racing, rather than just out for a pleasant jog; except for the person who came in second behind Hodgkinson in her group, who wasn’t as fast but kept a solid lead over everyone else and also made it look easy.
There was also a hugely impressive gymnastics performance today by Kaylia Nemour, on uneven bars. She never stopped moving. Most of them stop from time to time, usually at a hand-stand position (so lots of potential energy stored for conversion into movement), to get their bearings and get set up for the next thing. Nemour … didn’t. It’s like watching someone beat a difficult video game level while completely eschewing all of the save checkpoints, or thereabouts. No time to pause to think and no margin for error. Nemour won a gold for this, and from what I saw a well-deserved one.
Hodgkinson just claimed the gold. Way in front of the silver medal winner. Wow.
I am so glad that dems seem energized instead of going on a Biden Deathmarch.
@Ooglyboggles
I know, right? I understand the “they go low, we go high” impulse, but that only goes so far. It’s time to throw some elbows.
Walz is probably a pretty savvy choice, given that he started the “weird” framing, which makes him a good attack dog (as a VP tends to be). A lot of his wins in Minnesota can be credited to the legislature, but he signed them into law, so he’s got that going for him.
The NCO background amuses me, as the granddaughter of an Army NCO and someone who counts a USMC NCO as one of her oldest friends. I wonder if JD Vance is going to chicken out of the VP debates?
Perhaps most importantly Walz seems to have a knack for promoting policies that are popular with his constituency (and beyond) in language that fits comfortably on a bumper sticker. Letting kids go hungry is bad, and feeding them is good. Women should make their own health care decisions.
As the cherry on top, Walz has that vibe of the trusted coach/teacher who didn’t put up with bullies, or the uncle who would teach you how to check the oil in your car.