You may recall that all-dude panel of “experts” at that recent congressional hearing on contraception. One of the reasons it was an all-dude panel was that congressional Republicans wouldn’t let Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke testify on the costs of birth control. (She later testified at a separate hearing held by Nancy Pelosi.)
Apparently stating publicly how much contraception costs when it’s not covered by insurance is basically the equivalent of pooping on the flag to some misogynistic assholes, among them the always charming Rush Limbaugh, who has denounced Fluke as a “slut” and a whore, saying, at one point, that she
went before a Congressional committee and said she’s having so much sex she’s going broke buying contraceptives and wants us to buy them.
Actually, she didn’t testify about her own experience at all.
Also, does Limbaugh even know how contraception works? Yes, the number of condoms one buys depends on how often you have sex. (Or at the very least how often you hope to have sex. Who knows how many boxes of condoms, purchased in moments of optimism, have quietly expired on the shelf waiting for their purchasers to finally get their mojo working. )
But the costs of many other forms of contraception have no relation whatsoever to the frequency of sex. Women on “the pill” take a pill every day, regardless of whether they are having sex that day or not. Women using IUDs don’t run down to the health center to have one installed every time their vagina expects a visitor.
Birth control, in short, doesn’t work like Oxycontin or Viagra, the two pills about which Limbaugh seems most knowledgeable.
Sorry to belabor the obvious, which apparently isn’t so obvious if you’re a right-wing, woman-hating asshole.
So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. … We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.
Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Here’s the excerpt from his radio show in which he makes this creepy demand.
Child pornography is a multi-billion dollar international industry for a reason, people enjoy it. Humans are the most sexual creatures on the planet, the second is our closest relative the bonobo ape. Kids and adults have been having sex since before the dawn of man. If you want the rape and the kidnappings to stop you legalize it and take it out of the hands of the black market. Prohibition doesn’t work.
Yep, that’s right, he’s arguing that the best way to stop the abuse of children inherent in the production of child porn is to legalize it. And he got more upvotes than downvotes for his cheerful child porn apologetics.
After thinking the issue over a little more, Sirhotalot returned with an reassessment of sorts:
Edit: I was wrong about the child porn industry.
Yes, yes you were.
Apparently it’s actually quite small.
Yeah, that’s really not the main problem with your child porn apologia. The main problem is that IT IS A CHILD PORN APOLOGIA.
Let me explain once more why your vagina is like my money.
The A(n)nals of Online Dating blog manages to unearth some astoundingly awful and creepy online dating profiles. Looking around on the site’s archives the other day, I came across one profile that reminded me of so many discussions here I felt I needed to share it with you. Here’s some unnamed OKCupid dude explaining just what he looks for in a woman.
He starts off almost reasonably:
Message me if you are intelligent and can hold chopsticks and are not racist.
Ok, that’s a little confrontational, and the bit about chopsticks is odd, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting your date to be smart and not a bigot.
It’s at this point he careens off the road:
Also message me if you can understand that a WOMAN’S vagina is like a MAN’S money.
Go on.
Meaning if we are NOT dating and if I do not KNOW who you are, you will have to be able to provide for yourself.
Are there really a lot of women on dating sites that expect men they don’t know to pay their rent or electric bills?
I am not going to give a little unless you can give a little.
Ah, the transactional model of dating. What’s the over/under on this guy also being a raving Ron Paul fan?
Most women dont want to feel like a whore by giving it up on the first night and dont want to be used just for sex. They also dont want to give it up and then be afraid the man will leave. Thats the SAME way I FEEL about spending my hard earned money on you.
Because women don’t want to feel like whores, you’re going to treat them exactly like whores, by equating vaginas and money?
A lot of women in this town dont follow through with anything they say and a lot of them have A LOT of insecurities along with expecting a guy to buy them food and drinks and then completely walk over them.
By “walk[ing] over them” I presume he means that the women are not having sex with every guy who buys them a dinner while explaining at length about how vaginas and money are the same thing and why Ron Paul is the only hope for our nation.
I dont play that and I’ve dated a few women who are gorgeous who happen to understand what I am talking about.
So why the OkCupid profile? I guess these gorgeous women must not be returning his calls any more.
So if you u understand that my money and time is just as valuable as your body, then we’ll be in agreement to not share anything until there is an understanding.
You’ll need to sign the “sex for dinner” contract here and here, and initial here. And you’re ready to go!
Oh, and if you fellas here (of the heterosexual persuasion) are feeling a little left out, remember, there are some terrible, terrible women out there in online dating land for you as well.
If you like prescription drugs, weird bird feet, and fistfights with jealous Juggalo ex-boyfriends, send this little lady a note.
EDITED TO ADD: Holly Pervocracy has a great post on the wrongness of the vaginas = money equation here.
Clever. You encourage hatred towards men while using their own language to shame them. …
You’re just a hate-mongerer albeit an intelligent and creative one. Hitler would have just loved you
That’s right. I “encourage hatred towards men” by reporting what some dudes actually post on the internet, usually under a fake name that can’t be traced back to them. Pointing out when someone says something shitty evidently makes me as bad as Hitler. (I should note that I mock specific men, not men in general, and that I also mock specific women with similar opinions.)
Casper also complains that “[e]ven the name of your site is an effort to shame men.” Again, I should point out that the dumb punny title of this blog isn’t directed at all men, merely those who act like misogynist boobs (or, if you prefer, boobz). “Boob” is pretty much the mildest insult I can think of, not to mention one that is a bit archaic; it’s a bit like calling someone a ruffian or a jackanape. Frankly, it’s far too nice a name for many of the people I write about here.
Of course, Casper isn’t the only one who feels that pointing out the offensive crap that people say is somehow equivalent of starting a death camp in your backyard. Take the many critics of ShitRedditSays.
For those who aren’t familiar with the ways of Reddit, ShitRedditSays (or SRS) is a user-created forum (subreddit) on Reddit devoted to pointing out some of the worst, most bigoted and awful crap posted on Reddit that nonetheless gets upvotes and acclaim from Reddit regulars.
The SRS modus operandi may seem a bit familiar to anyone who reads Man Boobz: SRSers find highly upvoted crap on Reddit and post it to their subreddit, where others react with horror and/or laugh about how hilariously awful it is. They don’t send out “downvote brigades” to downvote the crap they link to; they don’t try to track the bigots down in the real world and harass them. No, SRSers post what they find, and they mock.
On a couple of occasions, they’ve gone further. When they discovered that actual child porn was being circulated in Reddit’s “Jailbait” subreddit, a hangout for ephebophile creepers to creep on pictures of underage girls, SRSers spread the word beyond Reddit, and the resulting media attention led to Reddit finally deleting that subreddit.
Problem solved? Not exactly; the creepers merely moved on to any number of other subreddits devoted to the sexualization of underage girls. And so SRS struck again, alerting the media to the fact that Reddit still hosted a forum even creepier than r/jailbait – that is, r/preteen_girls, devoted to sexualized pictures of girls under the age of 13. This time, the Reddit admins moved more quickly, and banned all the subreddits that, in their words, “focus on sexualization of children.”
And apparently the Reddit admins are still pissed off about it. Recently, someone on Reddit leaked the log of a private chat between a Reddit moderator and one of the site’s administrators (that is, someone who actually works at Reddit). (See here and here for more details.)
The admin, known as hueypriest, described SRS’s attempts to get child porn and other material sexualizing children off of Reddit as “kind of like a forrest [sic] fire,” and grumbled about SRSers and other opponents of child porn sending “frivolous tips” to the FBI:
the fbi is not interested in following up leads of 17 year olds who’s boyfriends post shit on the internet
And evidently neither was Reddit, until SRSers and others revealed what was going on in its sleaziest subreddits to the world.
Again, all SRS did was to point out what was there.
Ever since Reddit’s belated shutdown of what hueypriest euphemistically described as the “questionable” subreddits, there’s a lot of talk on Reddit about how SRS needs to be shut down.
A couple of comments in the SubredditDrama subreddit pretty much sum up the frustrations a lot of us feel towards Reddit’s admins and many of the site’s users. 1338h4x writes:
Subreddits sexualizing kids? Let that slide for 5 years until the public pressure and bad PR is finally too much. Subreddit calling out sexism, bigotry, etc? SHUT IT DOWN RIGHT NOW!
This would just be the ultimate validation of SRS’s message. I dare them to do it.
Making reddit look bad = the worst thing. Perhaps they should stay on the ball and actually get rid off the terrible shit in advance … you know, that way they don’t look bad by having a policy that tacitly allows child pornography to remain on the website for extended periods of time.
You would think this is a no-brainer. Apparently this is not the case~
Given the enmity towards women in general, and feminists in particular, that’s omnipresent in the manosphere, it seems logical to assume that most of the dudes lingering around MRA, PUA and MGTOW sites online would take a certain secret pleasure in seeing women suffer.
But good news, folks! It turns out that not all manosphere misogynists want women to suffer. Why? Because suffering is an ineffective way to put women in their place. That, at least, is the argument of a fellow calling himself Höllenhund. In a comment on Susan Walsh’s Hooking Up Smart blog, he offered this argument:
Making women suffer wouldn’t achieve anything in itself – I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of the Manosphere would agree. Women are normally solipsistic and they fail to understand their own urges and don’t comprehend the connection between cause and effect. They’d never understand why they’re suffering in the first place.
So, basically, in his mind, women are dumber than dogs and thus harder to train. Even worse, the suffering women can sit down in the street and cry, and countless “white knights,” hoping to win their approval (and get in their pants) will rush to their aid:
Suffering only motivates them to fish for male sympathy (and thus investment) through crying and whining, to blame ‘ bad men’ for their ‘misfortune’ and thus play the game of ‘let’s you and him fight’. That’s how it has always been.
So making women suffer is largely pointless. I’d go further and say it’d actually be detrimental to men because it encourages white-knighting and intra-male competition. …
And some of the ladies even seem to sort of like it:
Not to mention the fact that many women actually seem to find some sort of twisted pleasure in suffering, that all this’d simply serve to justify more anti-male legislation and whatnot.
Poor Höllenhund doesn’t have much hope that women will ever see how totally terrible they really are
[T]he notion of making women ‘admit their faults’ is pie-in-the-sky as well. Again, I’m sure pretty much everyone in the Manosphere would agree. You have a bigger chance of seeing pigs fly.
If women are to recognize their faults in this SMP [Sexual Marketplace], they need to have a realistic picture of both their own sexuality and the SMP in the first place, plus they need to have empathy for beta males …
Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?
Sorry, on with the rest of the sentence:
plus they need to be imbued with the sense of morality without which the very concept of ‘fault’ is meaningless.
And lecturing us about morality too?
I think we’ll sooner see Haiti become a dreaded military superpower.
I’d rather see that than live in a world in which women were so self-hating that they actually believed they were guilty of whatever unnamed sins Höllenhund attributes to them.
NOTE: I found Höllenhund’s comment because the blogger at Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology cited it as a prime example of the sort of brave “truth telling” that will get you banned “on feminist sites that supposedly support men.” And yes, it apparently did get poor Höllenhund banned from Hooking Up Smart. I’m not quite sure how Susan Walsh, a traditionalist devoted to slut shaming in a thousand different flavors, counts as feminist, but that’s not the point. The point is: I’m regularly accused of “cherry picking” comments from MRAs. In this case, Mr. PMAFT picked the comment for me.
Here’s unknowable woman, a frequent target of his cyber-wrath, with more details on his recent meltdown. (Read the post on her Tumblr blog for links to the evidence of his douchebaggery.)
Alexander Ryking, who has a history of attempting to silence women bloggers (he told Jess of STFUConservatives and the other “feminazis” to “go kill themselves” several months ago, and has also been rude to women of color but I haven’t been on Tumblr long enough to have personally witnessed that), defended The Amazing’s Atheist’s violent rape threats on Reddit by tagging his posts with “I support TAA.”
I and many, many other Tumblr users were disgusted by this, so we decided to tag our criticisms of Ryking that night with “Ryking’s banana republic”—a reference to his co-opting of [social justice] concepts, NOT a homophobic dig, and the person who coined it was a queer man anyway. Someone also wrote a few jokingly romantic lines about Ryking’s blind defense of TAA and new atheism, and Ryking interpreted this as homophobic and misandric…it wasn’t, but because I reblogged it, Ryking insists that I am now a homophobe, which is hilarious given my own sexual identity but whatever.
We also responded to some of his posts with pictures of extreme close-ups of our eyes.
Seriously. That is what this guy is calling “abuse.”
We did NOT threaten him, make personal attacks against his sexuality, tell him to go kill himself, send him rude messages, or commit any other acts that could reasonably be interpreted as the “cyberbullying” Ryking claims it is. I did temporarily change my URL to rykingsbananarepublic and I make no apologies for that. Why should I? Why shouldn’t a group of feminists and their allies be allowed to respond creatively to misogyny? The only actual cyberbullying that has taken place was TAA’s initial rape threats on Reddit; I wouldn’t even go so far as to claim Ryking’s tweets to me and other Twitter users are cyberbullying, though I leave it up to the other people who were insulted by him to label their experiences as bullying or not.
Anyway, a few nights later, I tweeted something in defense of Whitney Houston’s legacy, and suddenly there was Ryking going ballistic. He found me on Twitter, called me a cunt right off the bat, and insisted that I claimed Whitney Houston’s death was “more important than the death of 5,000 Syrians” (I didn’t! Here is what I actually said!). I had never exchanged tweets with this man before, and was confused about his sudden interest in my thoughts about Whitney Houston and Syria. Naturally, I responded, told him how wrong he was, and the next day I screencapped some of the things he said and posted them … I never expected that post to get the amount of notes it did, but I think that just goes to show how widespread the dislike for him is.
Ryking, for his part, has responded to the widespread criticism by striking the pose of a victim, and pretending that it is somehow all related to race. Apparently, the evil feminazis are impugning his white manhood, though he’s not white.
So-called feminists have subjected me to white-bashing comments (even though I’m Hispanic) and sexist attacks impugning my manhood (slash-fiction scenes featuring me and heterosexual men; being called faggot; being told to man-up; insults about my body;) by people who don’t realize I’m gay. After nearly two decades online, I learned early on that when you’re attacked, you defend yourself by attacking right back and just as viciously, if not more so. And that’s what exactly what I’ve done. …
What’s really at issue here is not my rude behavior but that you and others like you want to punish any man who refuses to conform to your rancid, misandrist orthodoxy by discounting everything he says and using his gender and race as the excuse for doing so. …
You don’t want me stripped of my editorial privilege based on my behavior but because I reject your sick, bigoted, misandrist (per)version of feminism.
Yep, apparently the dude who loves to call women “cunts” is the final arbiter of what is and what isn’t “true feminism.” Who knew?
While Reddit’s reluctant, long-overdue banning of subreddits devoted to sexualized pictures of children drew applause from many Redditors, there has, of course, been a considerable backlash from pedophiles, ephibophiles, and other assorted apologists. ShitRedditSays has already started covering this, and I’ll be doing some posts of my own.
So far the most appalling thing I’ve run across (thanks to ScrappyB for pointing it out in the comments here) comes from the BeatingWomen subreddit — which is, unfortunately, a real thing. Some people, you see, are suggesting that maybe Reddit shouldn’t be hosting a forum devoted to sharing images and videos of women being brutalized, so that Redditors can cackle over their victimization, make rape jokes, and whatever else they do there.
The idea that r/beatingwomen “might be next “ roused one racist, misogynist jailbait enthusiast to post this little manifesto.
He’s not trolling. If you look at his comment history you’ll see he’s completely sincere. (Actually, don’t look at his comment history. It’s horrifying. I’m not going to link to it.)
At some point, you’ve probably all heard some douchebag offer some version of the following bit of misogynist humor: You shouldn’t call a woman a bitch because that’s an insult … to female dogs!
A traditionalist Christian named Walter Allen Thompson has expanded this dumb joke into an even dumber essay. And he seems to literally believe it. As he explains in the essay, which has been posted on the Very Dumb Government blog (and which I ran across thanks to a link from our pal MarkyMark):
[W]hen some of you call a woman a “bitch” think about what you are saying. The word “bitch” means a female dog. So if you are going to use the word with its true meaning, you would actually be insulting female dogs, because the dogs have better behavior than many women. … I would never insult my dog by calling Gloria Allred a “bitch”. … I would call her a feminist but not a bitch. The feminist movement has made many of our women unseemly wenches.
Walter clearly holds a much higher opinion of his dog:
I love my bitch and I don’t want to say anything to offend her. My bitch is sweet, my bitch is lovable, my bitch is kind, my bitch is considerate, and she hardly causes me any trouble.
And, and as we all know, ladies is trouble:
A dog will give a man unconditional love; whereas, a woman may or may not keep you around depending upon the prevailing winds. I don’t have to buy my dog a food dish lined with jewels…. My dog doesn’t run up a charge account at Macy’s, and she doesn’t spend $50.00 to do her nails. My dog doesn’t take drugs, drink alcohol, or crash my brand new car.
I don’t know from dogs, but if my cat were actually capable of any of these things, she would do them. That’s part of the charm of cats. They’re tiny little monsters – selfish, self-absorbed, amoral creatures we let into our homes because they’re cute, they’re fascinating, and they’re too small to kill us. Not that mine doesn’t try.
I wouldn’t put up with that from a human being, but I put up with it from my cat because she’s a cat, and had a rough childhood (she was abandoned) and doesn’t know any better. Generally speaking, people expect different things from their pets than from their romantic partners.
Well, not this guy:
All my dog needs is a little love, attention, and her food. Overall, the quality of life with my dog has far exceeded any relationship I have had with any woman. The value of any relationship depends upon unconditional love, and that’s more evident with my dog.
“Unconditional love” sounds nice in theory, but in practice as most of us know it’s really a pretty shitty idea. If someone behaves in a way that is unlovable – attacks you, deliberately poops on the couch, starts reading A Voice for Men — you’re not obligated to keep loving them. Loyalty is, by and large, a good thing, and most of us are willing to cut those we love a lot of slack, but no one should be expected to put up with intolerable behavior in the name of unconditional love. (Also, people sometimes fall out of love. I know, shocking.)
People demand a bit more from their loved ones than dogs do, and that’s a good thing. Also, people know things that dogs don’t, and that’s also good. Hitler’s dog loved him. But then again Hitler’s dog didn’t know he was Hitler. (Hitler returned this unconditional love by having poor Blondi killed just before he killed himself.)
Of course, our boy Walter knows that most love is not unconditional. Indeed, as we saw above, he’s got a long list of conditions — some reasonable, some not — that women will have to meet before he’ll be willing to even consider them over his dog. Here are some more of his conditions, which his dog fulfills but most women (in his mind) won’t:
She doesn’t mess with my mind; doesn’t say. She doesn’t tell me she loves me today, but tomorrow she wants a divorce. My dog doesn’t pole dance at drunken parties. My dog doesn’t pick up “stud muffins” at bars. My dog doesn’t make porno films. My dog doesn’t take me to court (you lawyers..don’t get any ideas) and she doesn’t make any unreasonable demands. It is a perfect relationship as I don’t have to entertain any of her relatives. My dog is my friend and not my adversary.
It’s a pretty revealing list. He’s upset not only by infidelity, but also by women changing their mind about things – “say[ing] yes today and no tomorrow.” (Saying “no” to what? Sex? Does he think he deserves the right to rape his wife?) His idea of a “perfect relationship” seems to be one in which he doesn’t have to deal with a woman’s wants, or desires, or even her relatives.
Walter rails against feminists and feminism, but it’s clear that he also has issues with traditional women actually expecting him to fulfill his role in a traditional male-breadwinner marriage.
If you want to know where you stand with a woman, just run out of money. If you have a woman that stays with you when you’re broke or in a setback, then you have a good one.
Here’s a hint: if you don’t want a woman to expect you to provide for her, don’t marry a woman who expects you to provide for her.
Also: try not feeding your dog for several days, and see how lovable she is after that. (Given the strange literal mindedness of so many misogynists, I should add: don’t literally do that. Just imagine doing it, in your head.)
If I was ever to consider getting married again, the woman would have to (at the very least) rise to the level of the behavior of my beautiful little dog. Dogs and animals stay within the natural order in which God created; many people do not.
No, that’s ok. Stick to dogs for now.
EDITED TO ADD: As Molly Ren points out in the comments, it turns out that some dogs do pole dance. Heck, some even lick the stripper pole, like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. (Well, not exactly like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls.)
Yet another Reddit pedophilia explosion, this time centering around r/preteen_girls, a subreddit which is evidently filled with sexualized photos of preteen girls. (You thought the banning of Reddit’s Jailbait subreddit solved the problem? Nope; Reddit still hosts numerous subreddits catering to pedos.)
The subreddit came under some criticism elsewhere on Reddit a couple of days ago, and countless creeps leapt to its defense.
I don’t have the stomach to dig into this one, but ShitRedditSays is on the case.
Here’s an SRS thread discussing the screenshots and the controversy in general.
Many of the defenders of r/preteen_girls have responded to the criticism by angrily asserting that the pictures there aren’t nude or pornographic. Which is not, actually, true, as this SRS thread makes clear. Indeed, here is a screenshot of the incredibly creepy discussion that ensued in r/preteen_girls when one nude picture got posted. (Note: this screenshot shows a small censored thumbnail of the nude picture in question.)
Reddit used to be owned by Conde Nast. It is still owned by Conde Nast’s parent company Advance Publications. Why would this publishing giant, which owns dozens of media properties ranging from the New Yorker and Vanity Fair to the uber-wholesome Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, want to associate itself with a site that continue to host forums devoted to sexualized photos of underage girls?
NOTE: None of the links in this post go to r/preteengirls itself; they are all to discussions of it elsewhere. None of them link to any of the pictures in question, though one, as I noted, contains a censored thumbnail image of one picture posted there.
How seriously does Paul Elam, head cheese of A Voice for Men, take the issue of rape? So seriously that he has proudly declared that
Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.
It’s in bold in the original, too. Evidently, the best way to fight against false accusations is to let the guilty free.
Recently, Elam has started a whole campaign, complete with its own little acronym and everything, to encourage others to follow his lead. In one recent post, he even seems to be suggesting (in a wink-wink-nod-nod sort of way) that his followers should lie about their beliefs in order to get on juries, just so they can Fuck Their Shit Up and, as he put it in a one word comment advertising the post on Reddit, “nullify.”
Now, in his original post on rape, it seemed to be pretty clear that his ire was aroused specifically by the specter of evil women lying about being raped by men. As he put it, justifying his decision to acquit the guilty,
Women lie about being raped, judicial politicians make careers off of putting away sexual offenders, and a brainwashed public cheers it all on. That so many of the men caught up in this are innocent doesn’t stop the grinding wheels of all this injustice for even a moment.
But before we conclude that Elam’s stance on rape is simply misogynist, I point you to a new post that suggests that he takes the rape of men just as (not) seriously as he takes the rape of women – to the point that he thinks it’s hilarious to make jokes about raping men. Announcing a radio show devoted to further discussion of his surreal atheist post from earlier this week, he says this about one famously feminist atheist activist who is also a dude:
Hopefully, before we are done [with the radio show], MRA’s of differing views will find more common ground, and PZ Myers will be limping to the drug store for some KY Jelly.
I guess on AVfM, making a rape joke about about a man is just peachy, so long as the man in question is someone you don’t like.
Stay classy, Paul!
(Thanks to Xanthe for alerting me to Elam’s most recent post.)
