We Hunted The Mammoth
Welcome to the first installment of “what the hell is wrong with people, I mean really,what the hell Saturday.”
Today we’re going to look at a couple of recent controversies in the world of gaming. And by “controversies” I mean “women daring to get involved in the gaming industry and getting harassed by misogynistic assholes.”
First up, let’s look at the tale of a woman who’s now facing an angry internet mob because she drew a picture of the video game character Mega Man … as a woman.
We met new A Voice for Men writer Clint Carpentier earlier this week, when we took a look at a recent post of his waxing nostalgic about the good old days before marital rape laws, when wives couldn’t say “no” to their husbands and expect the law to take this no any more seriously than a husband intent on rape.
In a second posting, he’s doubled down on the whole marital rape thing and incorporated into a vast and fantastical vision of the past and future of humankind that bears so little resemblance to reality that it’s worth quoting in detail as a sort of case study in Men Going Their Own Way delusions.
Has A Voice for Men just declared itself in favor of marital rape?
In the midst of a long and otherwise fairly tedious piece complaining about wives asking their husbands to do their fair share of the chores, Clint Carpentier offers some rather startling thoughts on marital rape laws, and how he thinks they help to make marriage a losing proposition for modern men.
In the good old days, he writes, “sex was a wifely duty she was obligated to provide as per the terms of marriage.” But “since the advent of ‘marital rape,’ sex [in marriage] is no longer a loving duty, so it has become whim and weapon … .”
Yep. Apparently “being raped by your husband” is really just a way to fulfill your “loving duty” as a wife.
So, Carpentier concludes, if wives demand that you do the chores around the house, and you can’t rape them at will, what’s the point of even having one in the first place? After all, he argues, in an age of washing machines and readymade meals chores are easy, and men can get “once per day of blasé sex” from “any street-hooker” or splurge on “mind-blowing sex once a week [from] a well trained call-girl.”
And so, he writes,
If women are demanding that their husbands do their “fair share” of the chores, then why do men need wives at all? In man’s attempt to make their wives lives easier, they have reduced the wifely duties to next to non-existent. Why, women? Why oh why would you drive those final coffin nails of obsolescence in? Aside from children, there’s no benefit left to having a wife.
Well, if the only “benefits” you can see in having a wife are someone who will do the cooking and cleaning and whom you can rape at will, then, no, there is no benefit to you in having a wife now that marital rape is illegal. And there is certianly no benefit to any woman in marrying or dating or possibly even being in the same room as you.
Where have all the good men gone? Well… where have all the good women gone?
That’s right: A man who considers marital rape to be a husband’s right honestly thinks that he’s one of the good ones.
AVFM’s Paul Elam loves to rail against the evils of traditionalism and chivalry. Interesting that marital rape is one element of traditionalism he apparently has no problem with.
Today is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada, an annual event to honor the victims of mass murderer Marc Lépine, who gunned down fourteen women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989. Lepine, driven by a poisonous misogynist ideology, specifically targeted women, yelling “I hate feminists” before opening fire on one classroom of female students.
Reading over his suicide-note-cum-manifesto today, I was struck again by how, well, familiar it all sounded. While only a few MRAs have explicitly celebrated Lepine as a hero, his views on women and feminism would not be out of place on most Men’s Rights forums. Here’s Lepine, in his own words. (I’ve broken the wall of text into shorter paragraphs.)
[T]he feminists always have a talent for enraging me.
They want to retain the advantages of being women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventive leave) while trying to grab those of the men. … They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. …
Thus, the other day, people were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontlines during the world wars. How does this sit with the fact that women were not authorized to go to the frontline at the time??? Will we hear of Caesar’s female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50 per cent of history’s ranks, although they never existed?
I’ve seen complaints virtually identical to these — I hesitate to call them arguments — reiterated many times over on places like A Voice for Men and the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Speaking of the Men’s Rights subreddit, here’s how the regulars there honored the victims of the massacre today: someone posted a message that today was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (this is actually a different day, in November), and, well, this is some of what ensued.
MRB2012 gave us the quote in my headline:
![MRB2012 8 points 6 hours ago (12|4) Her explanation included how it all started with how a bunch of people who were labeled feminist were shot. This is a reference to the mass shooting committed by Mark Lepine. Most murder victims are actually male, but because of this one guy who targeted women we're all supposed to cry about how hard it is to be female. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]enzikio 2 points 3 hours ago (2|0) I didn't know about Marc Lepine until your post, but it looks like his page was updated with a feminist slant with this great quote A few men's rights activists seek to rehabilitate Lépine as hero of the anti-feminist cause. A look at the sources are a joke. They all appear to reference a single person who apparently made some comments that agreed with what Marc Lepine did. No where do their sources rise to the evidence of the quote above. permalink source save parent give gold [–]muttmonster 1 point 6 hours ago (2|1) Isn't that also the guy who yelled, "I hate feminists"? permalink source save parent give gold [–]darklycan51 -3 points 4 hours ago (5|8) To be fair there's some times i've considered doing that to feminists... lol](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/mrblepine.png?resize=519%2C525&ssl=1)
7Vega worried that awareness about violence against women was taking up too much of everyone’s time.
![7Vega 11 points 6 hours ago (14|3) How many fucking days do we have for violence against women? permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]muttmonster 6 points 6 hours ago (7|1) Yeah, I swear we just had one, and that's why google had a black ribbon on it's page. And they also use a white ribbon for the same thing? permalink source save parent give gold [–]7Vega 4 points 6 hours ago (7|3) Soon all colors will be associated with violence against women.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/vega.png?resize=505%2C257&ssl=1)
And JohnKimble suggested that violence against women is really all their fault anyway.
The greatest human rights movement of the 21st century, folks.
Apparently some of the folks at A Voice for Men are afraid that, amidst all the eulogies for one of the greatest freedom fighters of our age, people may lose sight of the fact that Nelson Mandela was, in fact, a man. Not a man in the fallible human being sense, as he was and all of us are, but a man in the not a lady sense.
So AVFM Managing Editor Dean Esmay felt it necessary to remind the world of this fact:
The Horseless Hun decided to rub it in a bit:
Kukla, meanwhile, wasn’t all that impressed.
This, again, is a site that thinks of itself as the locus of the “Men’s Human Rights Movement.” It’s also a place where the death of a real human rights icon becomes just another excuse to talk shit about women.
I was going to write up something today about International Men’s Day, the me-too what-about-the-menz holiday that’s so meaningless that even Men’s Rights activists can barely remember to celebrate it. Do we really need a day to “celebrate [the] achievements and contributions” of men? Don’t we get quite a lot of that already? Do we need a day given over to “highlighting the discrimination against [men]” as if this is really a thing?
But then I discovered that today was also World Toilet Day, and realized it was probably more worthwhile to promote this event, as the lack of toilets and proper sanitation — a widespread problem in parts of the developing world, particularly in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — can have devastating public health consequences.
Some disturbing facts, from the UN, which I clipped from this CNN story:
Learn more at the official website. Also, Al Jazeera has a useful infographic.
And just a note to the MRAs who have somehow concluded from this post that I am comparing men or men’s issues to toilets (!?), let me try to make my point very clear: I am contrasting a sharply focused activist campaign aimed at a very real problem — lack of toilets and proper sanitation in large parts of the developing world — with large consequences — disease and death, of adults and children alike — with a badly thought out International Men’s Day that seems largely driven by jealousy that “women get a day so why can’t we have one too.”
How halfassed is International Men’s Day? Here’s a screenshot of the International Men’s Day website’s “resources” page.
Generally speaking, you would expect a “resources” page to list facts and figures and possibly link to relevant other groups. All you get at the International Men’s Day site are some posters made from stock photos.
What I found on the site’s “about” page was much more troubling. The site was put online by a group called the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, working with the founder of International Men’s Day, Dr Jerome Teelucksingh. The Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, as I discovered with a bit of Googling, turns out to be a virulently homophobic and transphobic organization that is also behind a site called Gendermatters.com. A quasi-manifesto on the site titled 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters asserts, among other things, that:
Transsexuality signals a deceptively fierce disorder. Elective castration, mastectomy, hysterectomy, etc., are futile non-solutions. The cruel, permanent disfigurement of so-called gender reassignment is not the answer. Transsexuals need psychological and spiritual insight that frees them to celebrate the chromosomes they received at conception.
So, yeah, a halfassed men’s “day” that’s associated with transphobic assholes. Not exactly a winning combination.
Look, if you’re concerned about making a difference in the lives of men, pick the issue that matters most to you, and work on that. If you want to increase funding for prostate cancer research, work on that. If you want to raise money to help male victims of domestic violence, work on that. Actually do the hard work of activism. Don’t just have yourself a “day” and pretend that it means something.
EDIT: Rewrote part of the first paragraph and added all the stuff after the Al Jazeera link to clarify the point of this post, because clearly some people have missed the point entirely.
So some Swedish movie theaters have decided to institute a new rating system to let viewers know whether or not the films they show pass the Bechdel Test — that is, if at any point in the film two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man.
Over in the Men’s Rights subreddit, a fella with the classy handle classypedobear takes strong exception to this terrible affront to human decency. His argument?
Wait. WHAT IS WRONG WITH TALKING ABOUT KITTENS?
Thanks, AgainstMensRights subreddit!
Feminists often complain, with considerable justification, that Men’s Rights Activists try to turn every conversation about women’s issues into a game of “what about the men?” You’re talking about female rape victims — well, what about the male rape victims?
The trouble with this strategy, from the point of view of the Men’s Rights Activists anyway, is that this little “gotcha” is much less of a “gotcha” then they’d like it to be.
In the case of rape, for example, feminists are well aware that men are raped as well: the “Don’t Be That Guy” ad campaign, which sent so many MRAs into hysterics, focused on male victims as well as female ones. The emergency room rape advocate organization that a friend of mine volunteers for provides advocacy for victims regardless of gender.
So many MRAs have started playing another game: trying to twist the conversation around in order to cast women as the villains. Rape is a bit tough for them here, since the overwhelming majority of rapists are male. So MRAs talk about the alleged epidemic of female false accusers instead. Or they change the topic entirely and make dead baby jokes (see my post yesterday).
Recently, MRAs have tried a new strategy, seizing on data from The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, a massive study conducted in 2010 under the aegis of the Centers for Disease Control, to claim that “40% of rapists are women.”
Pity the poor Men’s Rights activists. The real civil rights movements that MRAs like to compare their, er, “struggle” to may have faced many obstacles that MRAs haven’t — from legal prohibitions on voting to fire bombings and assassinations — but at least they haven’t had a hard time explaining just what it was, and is, that they’re seeking redress for.
When Martin Luther King so famously dreamt of a world in which “my four little children will … not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” he was not only speaking eloquently; he was expressing an idea that was, well, pretty easy to understand.
Roosh V and the other human skidmarks who make up the reactionary “game”-centric wing of the manosphere have finally found something to rally around beyond their shared hatred of women and gays and trans* folks and fatties and people with skin colors different from theirs: they’re taking up the cause of a dude who recently got forced out from a high-profile position at news site Business Insider for loudly expressing his own hatred of … woman and gays and trans* folk and people with a different skin color than him.
Really, about the only manosphere prejudice that former Business Insider CTO Pax Dickinson doesn’t seem to share — and enjoy sharing with the world on Twitter — is a hatred of fatties.
Dickenson found himself the center of a Twitter tempest earlier this week after Valleywag’s Nitasha Tiku wrote a brief piece calling Dickinson a “Tech Bro Nightmare” and quoting some of his more noxious tweets. Among them:
