We Hunted The Mammoth
It’s time for another of our weekly looks at the world of “woke” — the all-purpose insult that’s the right-wing’s new version of so-called political correctness. Right-wing ideologues (and Bill Maher) are still railing about the allegedly “woke Olympics” and the evils of “woke capitalism.” But there are a few other examples that caught my eye this week.
“Drag Queen Story Hour,” DQSH for short, is pretty much what it says it is: A drag queen goes to a library and spends an hour reading stories to children. The idea originated with queer writer and activist Michelle Tea in 2015, and right-wingers have been having fits about it ever since, seeing it as a vile propaganda tool that’s “normalizing degeneracy” and luring children into the LGBTQ lifestyle. One right-wing Christian activist likened the events to “mental rape.”
Over on the MGTOW subreddit, the regulars are once again getting mad about the fact that some women expect men to pay for dinner on dates.
By David Futrelle
If you’ve ever wondered what the “precious bodily fluids”-obsessed General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove would sound like if he were, like, really into crystals and auras and shit, well, he might sound a bit like this dude I found in the Semen Retention subreddit today, warning his fellow semen-retainers of the alleged spiritual war being waged against their good vibrations.
By David Futrelle
I guess I owe an apology to Reddit’s contingent of Men Going Their Own Way. In the past I have suggested that MGTOWs spend all day every day talking shit about the women they’ve supposedly declared their complete independence from.
By David Futrelle
If anyone thinks the Mike Pence rule of never being alone with a woman lest something naughty happen isn’t discriminatory against women, consider the case of Mississippi Today reporter Larrison Campbell, who learned earlier this week that she wouldn’t be allowed to “ride along” with GOP gubernatorial wannabe Robert Foster on a 15-hour campaign trip because people might think that the two were “riding” each other, wink wink nudge nudge, knowwhatImean?
By David Futrelle
Self-described “involuntary celibates” want the world to pity them as decent men who have been cruelly denied sex by too-picky women who reject them for the tiniest of physical flaws. This is absurd in itself, but it’s made even more absurd by the fact that incels themselves tend to be pickier about women than any mythical Chad-chasing Stacy.
By David Futrelle
There’s some high drama going on in a segment of the manosphere I generally ignore because I find it so tedious. Several days ago, you see, the head grifter behind a long-running series of manosphere conventions booted one of the scheduled speakers — “Red Pill” guru Rollo Tomassi — from all future events. And it’s not at all clear why.
By David Futrelle
For the past few months I’ve been mildly obsessed with the Semen Retention subreddit, a sort of harder-core alternative to the bigger NoFap subreddit, full of earnest men convinced that if they can just keep their hands off their dingles for a long enough time they’ll gain quasi-magical powers and become irresistibly attractive to women. Their collective ideology is a weird mixture of pseudoscience, occultism, Eastern woo, and Red Pill misogyny, with a dollop of old-fashioned antisemitism occasionally tossed into the mix for flavor. For a connoisseur of weird misogyny like me, what’s not to love?
