We Hunted The Mammoth
So I was watching a little video roundup of some of the worst video games ever the other day and I came across some footage from a justifiably obscure little first-person-shooter called Operation Matriarchy.
The premise of this 2005 PC game, made in Russia, may as well have emerged from the fevered imagination of some Men’s Rights activist. Here’s how the promo blurb at MobyGames explains it, with the especially MRA-ish bits in bold:
Longtime readers of Man Boobz will have noticed that most of the pickup artists and “game” gurus I write about here are also vociferous slut-shamers.
This might seem a little odd and, well, counterproductive, in that you might expect that men who enjoy having no-strings-attached sex with a large number of women would in fact be kindly disposed towards women who enjoy having no-strings-attached sex with a large number of men.
The standard MRA take on the gender wage gap is that it’s totally a myth disproved by SCIENCE. But now the gap is apparently a real thing again in MRA-land, or at least in the Men’s Rights subreddit, because a fellow calling himself mrwhibbley has figured out a way to blame it on the ladies:
For proof, I suggest you watch this completely 100% percent true and not at all obviously staged phony video below:
H/T to the AgainstMensRights subreddit again!
Dalrock, a manosphere traditionalist with a great love of charts and statistics and other accoutrements of SCIENCE, has managed to figure out a way to stretch “don’t be so picky, ladies, or you’ll get old and ugly and no man will ever want you” out to 1500 words.
Here are a few of them:
The narcissistic racist pickup artist guru who goes by the ridiculous nickname Heartiste is a bit of an excitable fellow.
What’s got his man-panties in a bunch at the moment is an article on Slate noting that a small number of family therapists have begun to suggest that an affair might not mean the end of a marriage — and that in some cases a mature discussion of the raw feelings exposed by the discovery of an affair might possibly lead instead to a — gasp! — stronger marriage.
A Voice for Men’s so-called “Honey Badgers” — its little super-team of female MRAs, led by blabby Canadian videoblogger Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan — have a new theory about Anita Sarkeesian. And it’s a doozy.
Sarkeesian, you may recall, is a feminist cultural critic who’s faced pretty much nonstop harassment from misogynistic internet assholes since she launched a project to dissect sexist tropes in video games. AVFM has contributed, in its own special way, to this wave of harassment, with articles describing Sarkeesian as, among other things, a “moneygrubbing liar” and a “queen bee … girl interloper” in the world of video games; AVFM’s Dean Esmay also held her partially responsible, along with an assortment of other internet feminists, for the suicide of one Canadian Men’s Rights Activist.
The principals at AVFM have blamed her for — either inadvertently or deliberately — bringing this harassment on herself by going to 4chan and posting about her project. (As I noted in a previous post, there’s no actual evidence she ever did this.)
The Honey Badgers, for their part, are certain that getting harassed by 4chaners was part of her devious plan all along.
In a teaser for their internet “radio” show tonight, the “Honey Badger” known as TyphonBlue writes:
Like all professional damsels in distress, Anita Sarkeesian had to choose a good dragon. Just the right looming shadow to fall over her delicate and fragile sensibilities; just the right cackling stage-villain to inspire her cries of helpless horror.
She chose 4-chan. An internet forum known for it’s underbelly of foul-tempered and hair-triggered trolls.
Then, after accusing Sarkeesian of inviting countless rape and death threats upon herself (and only a portion of it from 4channers, I should add), the Badgers take their weird conspiracy theory one step further:
But we at Honey Badger Radio have noticed something… odd. The wave of so-called hate that Anita received from her carefully chosen dragon, wasn’t really all that bad.
Yeah. A year and a half (so far) of pretty much unending harassment and baseless criticism, complete with violent threats directed not only at her but at other women who have defended her — that’s nothing.
Compared to 4-chan’s usual scorched earth strategy–raizing [sic] everything to the ground and pissing on the ashes, Anita got a little singed, like she sat too close to a campfire.
So we have to ask… Did 4-chan white knight Anita? I mean, come on. Was that the best 4 chan could do?
Yes, that’s right. The Honey Badgers are accusing those who sent rape and death threats to Anita Sarkeesian … of “white knighting” her.
I can’t even.
The self-described ‘Men’s Human Rights Activists” at A Voice for Men have shown time and time again that they have approximately zero interest in actually promoting human rights, but would rather devote their time (and the more than $100,000 the site collects in donations annually) to attacking feminists and women in general.
The latest bit of evidence? The “meme” above, designed not to actually raise awareness of child abandonment but as a sort of “gotcha” aimed at one of their favorite targets, the “Don’t Be That Guy” anti-rape campaign that has been credited with significantly bringing down the incidence of rape in at least one major Canadian city.
AVFM’s Paul Elam introduces the “meme” with this little bit of vitriol:
Is there something about being a completely ass-backwards reactionary that inclines one to pomposity and metaphorical overkill? There must be.
The latest bit of evidence I’ve found for this hypothesis comes from MGTOWforums, where the fellas are discussing some article lamenting the impending collapse of the economy, or civilization, or something. (I don’t know, exactly; I didn’t read it.) Anyway, one of the commenters, a dude called DruidV, is pissed off that the article doesn’t take aim at what he sees as the true villains: Single moms.
So he writes … this:
Anything to avoid laying the blame for this whole mess right where it belongs:
Squarely at the feet of single mothers and the rapidly starving system that coddles and enables them with the blood and treasure of innocent Men and boys.
It doesn’t really matter how many boiler plate, self-indulgent, tradcon glue sniffing sessions these “writers” like this “put to paper”, for the mask of single motherhood and cuntdom in general has at last fallen completely off and shattered upon the cold, unforgiving stone floor of reality. Now revealed, the horrid, snake haired visage hidden for so long underneath has irrevocably turned many of us Men and boys to stone.
Take it away, Jeff!
Vox Day, the reactionary fantasy author and pickup guru who was recently expelled from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America , has convinced himself that education for women leads to “demographic implosion” because uppity educated women don’t have enough babies.
Indeed, Vox — real name, Theodore Beale — is convinced that education for women is such a bad thing that he actually thinks that “the Taliban may not, in fact, be the stupid ones with regards to this particular matter.”
By this he means not only that they’re right to keep girls out of schools, but that they’re also probably justified in shooting teenage girls for the terrible crime of speaking up publicly in favor of education for girls like themselves.
No, really:
[I]n light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban’s attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.
It’s quite telling that it is the “shooting-girls-in-the-head” issue that turns Beale — a right-wing evangelical Christian — into something of a fan of the Taliban.
Paul Elam, the founder and primary animating force behind the website A Voice for Men, is probably, for better or worse, the most influential figure in the Men’s Rights movement (or, as he prefers to call it, the Men’s Human Rights Movement).
Elam is also a fierce misogynist with a penchant for angry, violent rhetoric full of only-slightly veiled threats. But don’t take my word for it. Perhaps the best way to get to know Mr. Elam is through his own words.
So here are some of Elam’s thoughts on a variety of issues, taken from postings on his own website. I have linked each quote back to its source on A Voice for Men.
