Asha James – otherwise known as TyphonBlue – has taken issue with something I wrote about A Voice for Men, the hate site she has chosen to affiliate herself with. In my post detailing the hundreds of horrendous and disgusting threats and abusive comments one Canadian feminist has received after she appeared in a YouTube video that was heavily promoted on A Voice for Men and other Men’s Rights sites, I wrote that AVFM had only distanced itself in a “superficial way from some of the harassment it has played a central role in unleashing.”
Category: are these guys 12 years old?
So here’s an interesting story: The creator of the popular I Fucking Love Science Facebook page recently got a Twitter account.
Oh, I know that doesn’t sound all that interesting, but here’s the thing: When she got the Twitter account, she revealed to her Facebook fans that she was, in fact, a she.
This apparently shocked and confused a large portion of her readership. A … Woman? But … but … SCIENCE?! But there she was, with a woman’s name — Elise Andrew — and a woman’s face and everything.
Over on Hello Giggles, Julia Gazdag — also rumored to be a woman — reports on the reaction to Elise Andrew’s Big Reveal. Some chick at Reuters also did a piece on it.
(Thanks, Elizabeth, for pointing me to this story.)
So Anita Sarkeesian, who apparently didn’t run off with all her Kickstarter money to found a Misandist Gynarchy in the wilds of Canada, has released the first video in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games project. (I’ve embedded it below.)
Naturally, this is causing great consternation in certain corners of the Internet (*cough* Reddit *cough cough* everywhere else that misogynistic nerds congregate *cough*). In the Man Boobz forum, Katz has started a contest to see who can find “the whiniest, brattiest, most entitled response” to Sarkeesian’s video on the Internet. So far Katz and Myoo have found a couple classic comments from irate Sarkeeianaphobes:
[H]ow does one go about stating that genders and gender roles are social constructs? I mean is evolution nothing to her? Does the patriarchy make male peacocks dress provocatively?
Yes. Yes it does.
And:
I’m gradually losing respect for the opposite sex. I’ve unfollowed people on tumblr who talk about how great she is, because it actually causes bile to rise in to my throat.
Yeah, that’s a totally reasonable response to a woman making a video about video games.
So anyway, I’m thinking we should bring the contest over here.
See what you can find! Consider it a sort of scavenger hunt.
Here’s my contribution, from the Men’s Rights subreddit, complaining that Damsels in Distress are the truly privileged ones:
Amazingly, this acutally got called out on r/mr as being pretty damn stupid.
Also, I have another question, to add to the stack of other questions I’ve been asking lately: Just why do you think so many guys get so angry when girls and women invade what they consider a male sphere, like gaming? (Also, why do they consider gaming to belong to boys and men?)
Oh, and here’s the video that’s causing all this hubbub:
PUAHAte.com is an … interesting place. A site for debunking the ridiculous claims and shitty behavior of Pickup Artists? Sounds great – at least until you realize that the denizens are mostly dudes who hate PUAs for all the wrong reasons. That is, they hate PUAs not so much for being manipulative scumbags but for being ineffective manipulative scumbags — whose alleged magic formulas for bedding the hot babes don’t really work.
The other day I was introduced to a fledgling Twitter account, @puahate_txt, which reposts hilariously awful comments from PUAhate.com. This inspired me to take another look at the site and do a little poking around for awful quotes on my own. They weren’t hard to find. (It’s harder, really, to find comments that aren’t awful.)
Here’s one charming fellow, who calls himself ToadLookingMaggot, and who holds a grudge against the entire female gender because of a $3 loan gone awry.
After reading ” The manipulated man ” i saw women really for what they where, little selfish Moneysucking vampire Whores.
This rinsing stuff starts in high school if not earlier they try to leech money, food, free rides and basically anything that benefits them in some kind of form. I borrowed a female 3 dollars for meal a meal one time, for months she said that she was going to let me have it and in the end i never got them back.
It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 dollars or 2.000 dollars there freaks never pay you back. Only idiots buy drinks for women.
Men are ruining women because they let them get away with anything. Never in my life will i ever spend money on women unless we pay 5050 on a date.
Uh, obvious question here, but if you hate women, and think that they’re all “Moneysucking vampire Whores,” WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DATE THEM? I’m pretty sure that you’re not going to find many interested in you either, at least not after they get a whiff of your personality.
And that’s your PERSONALITY, not your looks. PUAhaters seem obsessed with the notion that women only date male models, and spend a lot of time bemoaning their own looks – I just quoted a guy who describes himself as a ToadLookingMaggot, after all. Yet whenever they post pictures of themselves they seem to be completely normal, average, not-actually-bad-looking-at-all guys. Guys, your problem isn’t your lack of beauty on the outside. What’s ugly is your attitudes.
Speaking of which, here’s RomanCitizen, a self-described Incel, lamenting that life is sad to all but the “top 10%” of men? Why? Because ladies walk around looking all pretty, yet for some reason they do not allow RomanCitizen to fuck them.
The life of man is a sad one
Excluding the top 10%.
Born into a world of plenty, of abundance, of denial.
See, smell, imagine.
Do not taste, touch, feel.
Like a caged animal in a harem, fed only occasionally fish heads (scraps in the game).
And when the caged animal gets the fish head (scrap), he is happy and rationalizes his pitiful existence, like many men …
But, the cage is still a cage. A fish head – still a fish head.
PROTIP: If you think of the women you don’t find sufficiently desirable as “fish heads,” and walk around in a perpetual boner-rage, you’re probably not going to seem especially charming to the women you do find desirable. Or to anyone else except perhaps the denizens of PUAHate.com. And not all of them, either.
I find the Oscars tedious, and only watched a few minutes last night — I bailed shortly after Captain Kirk made his appearance — but apparently I should have stuck around, if only to watch the insufferable Seth MacFarlane’s award-winning performance as Unfunny Misogynist Asshole Host.
What, you say, he didn’t actually win an award for that? Well, yes he did: Having read a number of accounts of the whole sorry spectacle, I’m awarding MacFarlane the non-coveted Man Boobz Boob of the Day Award (Oscar Edition). In the wake of MacFarlane’s performance at the Oscars, in which he devoted a whole song to actresses’ breasts, I should note that I am using the word “boob” to mean “nincompoop.” Which, to be honest, is an undeservedly mild epithet for a guy who punctuated his comments with repeated jokes about rape.
A few of the highlights of MacFarlane’s night:
That song-and-dance number about how great it is to see so many boobs in films – including, specifically, in The Accused, and Monster, and Boys Don’t Cry. You know, during the rape scenes in those quie serious films.
MacFarlane’s animatronic teddy bear (from his movie Ted) joking about attending an orgy at Jack Nicholson’s house – you know, the place where Roman Polanski raped a 13-year old girl.
Oh, and then there was MacFarlane joking about how 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis would be too old to date George Clooney in about 16 years. (What, is Heartiste writing MacFarlane’s jokes?) And his bizarre domestic violence joke about Chris Brown and Rihanna. And on and on. (See here for many more examples.)
Getting into the spirit of the evening, whoever was doing The Onion’s twitter account decided it would be hilarious to refer to the aforementioned 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis as a “cunt.” The Onion later deleted the tweet and offered an apology for it.
Somehow I doubt we’re going to get an apology from MacFarlane.
Here are a couple more takes on the whole unfortunate evening.
Why Seth MacFarlane’s Misogyny Matters (Vulture)
Seth MacFarlane and the Oscars’ Hostile, Ugly, Sexist Night (The New Yorker)
Oscar Watch: Was That Awful or What? (NY Post)
EDITED TO ADD: Oh, joy! The Men’s Rights subreddit weighs in on the issue, in a thread sort-of-responding to that New Yorker piece.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: Actually, r/mensrights has two threads on the subject; here’s the other one.
The Man Boobz Pledge Drive continues. See here for more details, or click below to donate.
And now back to our regularly scheduled post:
Someone posted this picture in the Men’s Rights subreddit yesterday with the title “Equality.”
[Trigger Warning: Depiction of violence against women.]
A veritable anthem for average looking guys with nothing particularly interesting about them who are pissed off they can’t date women much more conventionally attractive than they are.
#INeedMasculismBecause nothing is funnier than MRAs sincerely trying to explain their dumb beliefs to the world
So: many if not most of you have probably heard about the whole #INeedMasculismBecause thing. For those who aren’t: a bunch of Men’s Rights Redditors and other MRAs, inspired by a post on 4Chan, decided to swarm Twitter with #INeedMasculismBecause tweets in response to the #INeedFeminismBecause hashtag. Feminists responded by outswarming the MRAs, flooding their new hashtag with often quite hilarious parodies of MRAspeak, as well as some just plain ridiculousness.
Oh, Reddit, not again. So about a week ago, a woman posted what seemed to be a heartfelt and sorrowful confession to r/confession with the self-explanatory title “I cheated on my sweetheart of a husband for 3 years with my violent, abusive ex. This is the one secret I am taking to my grave.”
Now, r/confession purports to be a subreddit devoted to helping out those who confess their wrongdoings, and the sidebar warns potential commenters not to be abusive: “No personal attacks, we are not here to make people feel bad.”
As everyone reading this blog no doubt already knows, feminists have hailed the Pentagon’s decision to open combat jobs to women, which will allow women the same opportunities to serve as men. The decision is also a backhanded acknowledgement that, for all intents and purposes, women are serving in combat today already. (Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth lost both of her legs in combat in Iraq – but officially, what she was engaged in wasn’t combat.)