We Hunted The Mammoth
You may have read about the heartbreaking story of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who recently posted a much-watched YouTube video (posted below) detailing the bullying and harassment she’d endured online and in real life. This past Wednesday, she was found dead, the apparent victim of suicide.
NOTE: Just one more day of the Man Boobz Pledge Week! Big thanks to everyone who has donated!
If you haven’t yet, and want to, here’s the button you’re looking for:
UPDATE: Vacula has resigned.
As most of you are no doubt aware, the atheist and skeptic movements have had just a teensy bit of a problem with misogyny in their ranks. You may recall the unholy shitstorm that erupted last year when Rebecca Watson of Skepchick casually mentioned in a YouTube video that it might not be such a good idea for dudes to try to hit on women in elevators at 4 AM. The assholes of the internet still haven’t forgiven Watson for her assault on the sacred right of creepy dudes to creep women out 24 hours a day, every day.
There are a lot of hair-raisingly reactionary dudes on The Spearhead, but perhaps none quite so hair-raising as the prolific commenter who calls himself Darryl X. Here are some of his pearls of wisdom, taken from a recent Spearhead thread. (Many of his comments in the thread were devoted to a sort of mini-vendetta against another Spearhead commenter, Andie, who had committed the crime of commenting while female; I’ve cut out most of that to focus on Darryl’s more timeless thoughts.) Fair warning: This is extreme stuff, even by Spearhead standards.
Since the solution for the past forty-four years was to kill and impoverish and exile and imprison men and steal their kids, I’d say sending women to live in a cave is a generous trade.
Have you heard about the big debate in Vancouver? In the wake of the recent hubbub over Men’s Rights posters in that fair city, one woman thought it might be a good idea for there to be a public debate over some of the issues raised by the posters.
I’ll let A Voice for Men’s JohnTheOther explain it, in his adorably poncy way:
Has feminism gone too far? …
That is the question asked in September of 2012, by a woman of integrity and courage. She posited this question as the premise of a public debate. It was to be discussed by three individuals from the contention that yes, feminism has gone too far, and three individuals arguing that no, feminism has not gone too far.
But, alas, this debate was not to be.
In the fast-paced, perpetually busy world of today, we don’t all have time to read every post on A Voice for Men. So here is an edited version of Paul Elam’s latest post, on Rebecca Watson of Skepchick. And whores. And how he personally doesn’t spend all his time claiming to be a victim, even though he totally is one, in case you forgot since the last time he reminded you of that.
Here’s Paul:
Whores … typical whore … Main Street walking, garden variety anybody’s whore … honest whore. … corporate whore … corporate whores … whorish sexual symmetry … stupid whore … stupid whore … whore … lying whore … whore … lying whore … whore … lying whore … corporate whore … a lying whore can also be a corporate whore … whoring for the cause … whore … PZ Myers … stupid, lying whore … not just a lying whore who also happens to be a stupid whore … a different subspecies of whore altogether … stupid, lying whore … whore that rigorously abandons intellect, rationale, evidence, decency and compassion, and also fosters much deserved hostility toward themselves … stupid, lying whore … stupid, lying whore … .
Paul Elam, meet Tom Martin.
Complementarian Loners, a relationship blog of sorts run by two kinky but reactionary Catholics (and which I’ve written about before), describes itself as “primarily a blog of ideas.” The main idea seems to be that women are awful, worthless creatures. Surprisingly, it is CL, the female half of the blogging team, who is often the most vociferous on this point.
In a post unironically titled “Tits or GTFO (a.k.a. How Women Ruin Everything),” CL defends the regular harassment women face when entering – sorry, “invading” – “male spaces” online. As she writes:
Too many women will waltz in and expect to engage everyone, with no sense that perhaps they should just hang back once they’ve had their say if they even have it. They talk and talk and talk, derailing conversations, going off-topic usually to talk about themselves, until all that’s left is a room full of clucking hens and all the smart guys eventually get fed up and leave.
They want to be considered equals yet prove they do not deserve it both by showing that what they really want is to be up on that pedestal and that they are incapable of rational thought.
So the top post in the Men’s Rights subreddit for a time yesterday, with hundreds of upvotes, was a post devoted to the question: “Why should male gamers change their behavior?” Yep, apparently the sacred right of men and boys to harass women and girls on Xbox live is one of the most important Men’s Rights issues of the day. Here’s how the OP, IsItRacistToAsk, framed the issue:
[G]amers themselves (until relatively recently) were a 90% male community. This goes back really far if you count non-video-game games (like Dungeons and Dragons and the like). Now all of a sudden they’re expected to just behave differently because some girls want to join?
I’m not saying girls shouldn’t be welcome in gaming communities, I’m just comparing them to someone who shows up, uninvited, to a house party and demands everyone go out and get blue plastic cups because red offends her.
Well, no, it’s more like a girl or a woman going to a public event, open to everyone, and facing a small army of creepy dudes who come up to her making sandwich jokes and calling her a bitch and a whore and a fat slut and demanding that she show her tits and when she refuses telling her “I hope your vibrator shorts out and fries your fucking vagina.”
It’s pretty good show. Most of the discussion involves social media researcher and Fordham professor Alice Marwick and Helen Lewis of the New Statesman. Those of us in the Google+ Hangout pop in briefly with comments and questions.
FWIW, I appear only briefly in the show proper, but I have a somewhat longer (and a bit more coherent) comment in the ten minute “online only” portion that immediately follows the show (and which is also on this video).
It was a somewhat strange, if educational, experience, my first appearance on TV. (The next time I get webcammed into a show, I won’t reflexively look down at the laptop while talking.) It all went by really, really quickly. Weirdly frantic behind the scenes as the producer tried to slot us all in.
The comments on the video on YouTube nicely illustrate the problem we were discussing; that is, they are a rancid pile of misogynistic shitlordery.
My favorite comment is this one from Urhoboman5 about Rebecca Watson:
At 5;30 that chick has a youtube channel. Just type in rebecca feminist and you’ll find it. Interesting how most of her videos are voted down. Sometimes as much as 80% negative because the stuff she says is pure nonsense.
That’s right. He actually thinks that the fact that her videos are targeted by downvote squads proves that she’s wrong to talk about harassment. She’s harassed by dudes who don’t like her talking about harassment so therefore it’s “nonsense” for her to talk about harassment. Brilliant.
So yesterday, I appeared (albeit very briefly) on TheStream on Al Jazeera English along with Helen Lewis of the New Statesman, social media researcher Alice Marwick, Skepchick blogger Rebecca Watson, and others. The topic: online misogyny and harassment of women. No sooner had the show ended than I ran across two perfect examples of precisely the sort of misogynistic harassment we’d just been talking about, courtesy of Reddit and Roosh.
First, Reddit. On Monday, Forbes columnist Kashmir Hill – female, beep boop! – wrote a piece mocking the notion (apparently widespread in some circles) that in these hyper-connected days people without Facebook accounts are a bit suspect. But part way along towards making her point she committed the terrible error of making the following not-to-be-taken-literally remark:
I will be appearing on Al Jazeera English tomorrow talking about misogyny online. The show I’m going to appear on is called TheStream; it’s on at 3:30 PM ET.
You can watch a live stream of the show on the Al Jazeera website here.
If you want to be part of the discussion on the show, you can record a comment for the show’s producers here, or on the main page for TheStream. Some of the questions they’re asking:
Do women face more misogyny online than they do in person? Why? Does it reflect real sentiment or opportunistic, anonymous behavior? Have you experienced harassment as a woman online? What can be done about it?
I’m really looking forward to the show. It should be interesting.
If you have any suggestions about issues I should raise or points you think it’s important to make, let me know in the comments below.
