We Hunted The Mammoth
By David Futrelle
Today (March 8th) is International Women’s Day, also known as International “Men Being Dicks About International Women’s Day” Day — and few men are celebrating that second holiday more enthusiastically than Reddit’s contingent of Men Going Their Own Way.
This just in! According to some random dude on the Red Pill subreddit, our culture is going to hell in a little pink handbasket and it’s all the fault of you women.
Consider:
It is with heavy heart that I bring you this news: Reaxxion, the dopey video game site that racist skeezeball PUA and rape legalization proponent Roosh V set up at the height of #Gamergate, has been shut down.
Wait, did I say “with heavy heart?” I meant AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!
You may have already heard the news: the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot with women in the lead roles — which caused such consternation amongst the douchebags of the world when it was recently announced — is going to be followed up with another Ghostbusters featuring dudes at the helm once again.
No, really.
Deadline spoke to Ghostbusters mastermind Ivan Reitman, who is forming a new production company with Dan Aykroyd to explore the wondrous new branding opportunities that lie in wait:
We want to expand the Ghostbusters universe in ways that will include different films, TV shows, merchandise, all things that are part of modern filmed entertainment … This is a branded entertainment … .
This is obviously going to be amazing. What, after all, is more hilarious than branded entertainment?
But why stop here? Clearly it is an injustice to the world’s men EVERY time women star in films that should rightfully belong completely to dudes, like everything else in the world.
So here are 20 more dude-ified “reboots” of films with female leads.
So here’s a new perspective on the whole “should we allow women to take over the tech industry or any other industry” question, courtesy of the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog. Yes, women, if you want to run a business or an industry you apparently have to check with the dudes at the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog first.
In a post titled “Why We Don’t Want Women Taking Over Tech Or Any Other Industry,” the ironically named “Reality forever” explains that women shouldn’t be allowed to run anything because, well, women are terrible and apparently love making everyone go to meetings:
Though Men’s Rights activists devote an enormous amount of their time denouncing feminism – or at least the imaginary version of feminism that exists only in their own heads – they’re happy to appropriate feminist concepts when it suits them. One that many MRAs seem especially eager to claim for themselves is the idea of the “safe space.”
Of course, their version of the “safe space” bears only a slight resemblance to the feminist original. Feminists seek to create spaces for discussion in which say, rape survivors can discuss their experiences without being triggered by insensitive arguers and trolls and mansplainers in general.
When MRAs talk about “safe spaces,” by contrast, their goal is often to exclude women not just from discussion spaces but from full participation in society, essentially declaring giant arenas of work and play, from STEM fields to video games, to be places where feminists, and women in general, should fear to tread.
And so it’s hardly surprising that more than a few MRAs are arguing that the Zoe Quinn “scandal” proves that women and gaming don’t mix – or, at least, that they shouldn’t.
Here’s a meme posted recently to A Voice for Men’s Facebook page. I know, a graphic suggesting that any man who enters into a relationship with a woman is bound to end up “miserable, or divorced and broke” is pretty darn misogynistic.
The creator of this graphic, who has imaginatively picked “John Galt” as his pseudonym, explained his thinking thusly in several comments on the Facebook page:
In making it I was in fact thinking of the Nash Equilibrium in Game Theory, popularized by Russell Crowe in the Movie ‘A beautiful mind’. In a society where the hypergamous instincts of many women are driven to cruel extremes by feminism It is ever more relevant to highlight to men that being shamed or encouraged to compete for something that is repeatedly demonstrated as worthless is not only important but very healthy. …
[I]t is in fact Marriage I had in mind but these days cohabitation is the same as marriage under the law. Effectively it is impossible for men to trust even a purportedly good woman simply because of the law, but then it is up to women to change that – all we can do is defend our own freedoms and rights and that is what is most important to me. Of course competing for the right to be treated like garbage is the main point and intentions mean nothing without actions…for men that action must needs be self interest first – ironically the one thing we have been trained and bred to ignore.
So, yeah, in addition to being nearly incoherent, this is pretty much misogyny turned up to 11.
But I think we can do better. Let’s consider this graphic a challenge. I invite any readers here who have graphic talent — and those completely lacking graphic talent whatsoever — to come up with a fake AVFM meme that’s MORE misogynistic than this. BONUS POINTS if you can incorporate an actual quote from an AVFMer in the graphic.
To inspire you, here are some completely unrelated gifs of tiny animals being adorable. (I found them all here.)
Sometimes it seems like the internet, or at least huge portions of it, is essentially a giant harassment machine, directed primarily at women.
This week, the target of the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine is game developer Zoe Quinn. Quinn, best known as the creator of the text-based Depression Quest, faced down two previous waves of harassment from gamer dudes who were angry about her game, for some gamer-dude reasons I can’t claim to understand, and who grew even angrier after Quinn spoke publicly about being harassed.
Her harassers claimed that she was lying about being harassed previously, and apparently figured there was no better way to prove that she hadn’t been harassed in the first place than by harassing her about her claims of harassment. I’m sorry if that’s confusing, but the “logic” of internet assholes tends to be a bit circular.
The latest wave of harassment is on a whole new level of viciousness. Because this time her haters have what they see as proof that she is indeed the evil [insert favorite anti-woman slur] that they’ve always claimed her to be. Their alleged smoking gun consists of a series of excruciatingly detailed blog posts by a vengeful ex-boyfriend describing how she allegedly cheated on him and lied about it; at roughly 10,000 words in all, not counting all the screenshots of online conversations presented as proof of his claims, his story is nearly the length of a novella.
You might ask: why is any of this any of our business? It’s fucking not. Some have tried to claim this is about “ethics,” accusing Quinn of trading sexual favors for a positive game review. But the journalist she allegedly slept with never actually wrote a review of her game.
Of course this has nothing to do with any real ethical concerns on the part of her attackers. As Quinn has pointed out herself, the people who are gleefully sharing her personal information, posting nude pictures of her, sending her threats, and otherwise trying to destroy her life don’t have any fucking ethics.
No, this is just another excuse to go after an outspoken woman on the internet, and a chance for misogynistic gamer dudes to score a symbolic victory against any and all women who are trying to enter what these guys want to see as a clubhouse where girls aren’t allowed. Anita Sarkeesian has been dealing with the same sort of shit ever since she first set out to examine sexism in the gaming world.
I honestly don’t have the psychic energy to collect together examples of the horrible shit people are saying about her; just type her name into Google along with your favorite anti-woman slur and you’ll have more proof than you need. Or go to Reddit and make your way to any of the numerous subreddits devoted to gaming and/or misogyny, where many people will be thrilled to tell you all about how “the video game industry is being fucked over because of these women.” (Actual quote.)
Quinn has said all I think she needs to say about this in an eloquent blog post of her own. Here’s a portion of it:
I am not going to link to, or address anything having to do with the validity of the specific claims made by an angry ex-boyfriend with an axe to grind and a desire to use 4chan as his own personal army. This is not a “she-said” to his “he-said”. The idea that I am required to debunk a manifesto of my sexual past written by an openly malicious ex-boyfriend in order to continue participating in this industry is horrifying, and I won’t do it. It’s a personal matter that never should have been made public, and I don’t want to delve into personal shit, mine or anyone else’s, while saying that people’s love and sex lives are no one’s business. I’m not going to talk about it. I will never talk about it. It is not your goddamned business.
What I *am* going to say is that the proliferation of nude pictures of me, death threats, vandalization, doxxing of my trans friends for having the audacity to converse with me publicly, harassment of friends and family and my friends’ family in addition to TOTALLY UNRELATED PEOPLE, sending my home address around, rape threats, memes about me being a whore, pressures to kill myself, slurs of every variety, fucking debates over what my genitals smell like, vultures trying to make money off of youtube videos about it, all of these things are inexcusable and will continue to happen to women until this culture changes. I’m certainly not the first. I wish I could be the last.
Because I’ve had a small degree of success in a specific subculture, every aspect of my life is suddenly a matter of public concern. Suddenly it’s acceptable to share pictures of my breasts on social media to threaten and punish me. Suddenly I don’t have any right to privacy or basic dignity. Suddenly I don’t get to live out normal parts of life, like going through a bad and ugly breakup in private. I have forfeited this by being a blip in a small community, while those who delight in assailing me hide behind their keyboards and a culture that permits it, beyond reproach.
My life and my body are not public property. No one’s life and body are public property.
Sexuality is one of the most personal, hurtful, and easy things to demonize a woman over, and also has nothing to do with my games. Yet large swaths of the gaming community are either unable or unwilling to separate the two. I’m convinced that my ex chose 4chan as the staging ground for his campaign of harassment and character assassination because he knew this; he knew that someone claiming to be “from the Internet” has shown up at my house once already, and he is counting on the most reviled hubs of our community to live up to their sordid reputations. This is another example of gendered violence, whereby my personal life becomes a means to punish my professional credentials and to try to shame me into giving up my work. I’m still committed to doing my small part to create a world where no woman is at risk of experiencing this.
I don’t have anything to add.
This is a NO TROLLS, NO MRAS thread. Anyone posting any doxxing shit in the comments below, or adding to the harassment against her in any way, will be banned.
The He-Man Manosphere Cat Fight Continues! The long-awaited 20/20 story on the Manosphere did not, alas, run as scheduled last night — it’s been postponed until who knows when — but the Men’s Rightsy infighting it inspired continues!
Yesterday, you may recall, the Spearhead’s WF Price called out A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam for his alleged naiveté in going on the show in the first place, and for generally being a shitty backstabbing narcissistic asshole — all fair enough criticisms.
Well now Elam and his AVFM attack squad have responded to Price’s attack in the comments on the Spearhead– as various Spearhead readers have stepped forward to offer their own thoughts on Elam, many of them even less flattering than Price’s screed.
So I’ve been reading a bit more in the Evo Psych literature — some of the alleged classics in the field that most Manospherians seem to have either read or absorbed by osmosis. I’m learning a lot about the dubious “science” underlying many of the Manosphere’s most cherished beliefs.
But I’m a little worried for my own intellectual safety, because I see so much clear evidence around me that reading too much Evo Psych can turn one’s brain to mush.
Consider the example of rmaxgenactivepua, the Evo-Psych-addled gentleman who writes the blog “Rejecting Modern Women: Pickup & Advanced NLP & Charisma Behaviourial Conversational Strategic Technologies.” Specifically, consider the recent post of his that asks the grammatically confusing question: “Is It Possible For Women To Be A Healthy Promiscous [sic] Woman?”
I’m just going to quote the whole damn thing because, yikes:
To definitively answer that question, is a woman biologically designed or hardwired to be promiscous
Are there any biological co-factors which support a womans ability to be promiscous?
A womans vagina is a massive breeding grounding for std’s, making it highly unsuitable & dangerous for sleeping with multiple men
Women have a highly short period of fertility. only 10 years of fertility, less if theyre in bad shape
Women have a limited amount of eggs
Plus women dont have the emotional blocking abilities of men
The real kicker is, women are only capable of having one mans child at a time
If women were meant to be polygamous, they’d be able to carry multiple children of multiple men
Making it ludicrous to assume women are polygamous, it’s laughably ridiculous to assume women are polygamous when theyre own biology isnt even capable of reproducing polygamously
Men on the other hand are designed from the ground up to impregnate millions of women, they reproduce over millions of sperm a day, & can impregnate 100′s of women
In fact one man, men are so efficient at reproducing with hundreds of women, one man could repopulate an entire civilisation if he wanted to, thanks to his production of millions of sperm
One woman on the other hand, couldnt populate her own ass, let alone a shoe box or a cat litter tray …
Proving a woman isnt anywhere near designed to be a slut, FACT
Well, yeah, I guess if you make up a rule that states women can’t have sex for pleasure with multiple partners unless they’re biologically capable of giving birth simultaneously to children sired by all these different partners, then women aren’t designed to be “sluts.”
Then again if you can simply make up your own rules like this, you can prove pretty much anything. If I decide that men can’t be polygamous unless they are simultaneously holding their breath underwater and on fire, I guess I’ve proved that men can’t be sluts either.
FACT!
Oh, and while it’s true that a cis man with healthy sperm could (in theory) repopulate an entire civilization, there are some women who are giving men a run for their money in this department.
