Category: irony alert

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Spinning the Eivind Berge arrest: Reddit vs. The Spearhead

Berge: Too provocative for his own good?

The spinning of Norwegian Men’s Rights blogger Eivind Berge’s arrest for threatening police officers has begun.

Over on Reddit, the leading hangout for the Men’s Rights movement’s  “moderates,” most MRAs seem to want to have nothing to do with Berge’s extremism (which is good), to the extent that many of them are declaring him not an MRA at all (which is ridiculous).

Sorry, guys. Berge may literally be the world’s worst MRA, and one that most MRAs have been content to ignore, but he’s still an MRA. He’s described himself as such many times (e.g., here); he has many of the same views and obsessions as “mainstream” MRAs; and he’s even got a few outspoken MRA fans.  And while some Reddit Men’s Rightsers were distancing themselves from Berge in the wake of his arrest, others were respectfully discussing a blog post from Berge’s girlfriend Emma the Emo (who shares many of his views) taking aim at what she called “American pedophile hysteria.”

Over on the Spearhead, the more reactionary W.F. Price has a rather different spin on Berge, as encapsulated by the title of his blog post on the subject: “Eivind Berge Arrested for Provocative Rhetoric.”

Evidently, threatening to stab a police officer (and announcing the day on which you plan to do so) is merely a sort of rhetorical flourish.

It’s a strange and often incoherent post, in which Price seems to argue that Berge’s threats don’t count as real threats because … he made them publicly? Here, you make sense of it:

Eivind Berge has been posting some pretty provocative stuff for quite a while now, including his desire to kill police for enforcing misandric laws. I agree with his girlfriend that it was a bunch of hot air, but he got arrested for it anyway. Despite his support for Anders Breivik, who decimated the youth wing of the Marxist/Islamist Norwegian left in a solo Knights Templar crusade last year, I seriously doubt Eivind would have carried out any violent acts. Breivik, who really meant business, kept his plans to himself.

The truth is that people who manage to pull off spectacular terrorist attacks are almost always those who don’t say anything about them beforehand. Think Mohammed Atta vs. James Ujaama.

Yeah, it’s not like Osama bin Laden ever made threats about attacking the US. Or that abusers who threaten their exes ever actually harm them. Or any of a million other examples in which someone who issues a threat carries out said threat.

The lesson here is that if you want to be political, there’s a sort of tortoise/hare dynamic at work. The impetuous, fast hare tends to run out of steam (or run into trouble with the law) fairly quickly. The slow-and-steady tortoise, on the other hand, keeps trudging on and wins the race. …

[T]hreatening to kill people openly and loudly is essentially worthless.

Is Price really equating terrorists who plot their attacks secretly with the slow-and-steady tortoise who wins the race?

Who the hell knows. But he is clearly offering an apologia for making violent threats on the dubious grounds that those who threaten their enemies openly are somehow therefore not dangerous.

Later Price offers this completely clear cut and definitive repudiation of violence.*

We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that violent action will do us any good. Of course violence does work, but the power of the state is so overwhelming today that individual acts are almost certain to fail. Furthermore, those who are willing to unleash violence on others must be prepared to die themselves, and must lead by example. Somehow, I don’t think many of us have reached that point. It’s a long road to get there, and I hold out the hope that it will never go that far.

[T]he point is that anyone who condones violent action loudly and publicly, but doesn’t back it up, can’t be taken seriously.

In the comments, Eric complains that men who commit violence for putatively political reasons may suffer the indignity of being called bad names:

As we have all seen repeatedly, violence against men is socially and politically sanctioned violence. A man committing violence in defense of his rights is labelled a ‘terrorist’ or an ‘extremist’. The case of Thomas Ball is a perfect example. …

The feminist elites are bullies who are aware of their power and our inability to ‘push back’ in any way that will cause them deserved pain (at least for now). But like all bullies, they are also rabid egomaniacs and fear anyone who doesn’t bow slavishly to their power. The more men who are informed as to their true nature and who are taught to despise them, the weaker these bullies become because their fear of exposure and losing their power is a mania.

I guess Eric’s main beef is with the English language. I’m pretty sure that using violence to cause “deserved pain” in an attempt to intimidate your political enemies is basically the dictionary definition of “terrorism.”

Further down in the comments, Eric sets forth a curious little conspiracy theory involving, well, me. In one comment, he suggests that the attention I’ve given to the Berge arrest

illustrates that the anti-MRM forces are primed and ready for a ‘false flag’ or provocateur-instigated ‘incident’. … The feminist elites have noticably shifted from typical ridicule to painting the MRM as a dangerous extremist movement.”

In a followup comment, he elaborates on this peculiar logic:

Futrelle … does seem unusally worked up. …

I have the feeling that something ominous is in the wind.

This kind of language out of the Mangina League; the SPLC’s attention; the spate of troll and provocateur attacks and hacking on mens’ blogs; this crap going on in Scandanavia—there’s definately a pole-shift among our enemies and it stinks of orchestration.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t make up many years worth of threatening comments from Eivind “killing at least one cop is on my bucket list” Berge. So does this mean that Berge is some sort of deep-cover feminist operative? What does that make Paul “fucking your shit up gives me an erection” Elam?

—

*

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antifeminism bullying harassment irony alert men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny narcissism oppressed men pussy pass vaginas violence

The wit and wisdom of the guy who created that “beat up Anita Sarkeesian” game

Yesterday I wrote about a vile online game in which players were invited to “beat up Anita Sarkeesian,” the feminist cultural critic who’s faced endless harassment because she had the temerity to ask for donations to fund a video project looking at sexist tropes in video games.

The game, which (happily) has been removed from Newgrounds.com, where it was originally posted, was put together by a young Canadian gamer named Bendilin Spurr. On the game’s page, he offered this explanation as to why he created the game:

Anita Sarkeesian has not only scammed thousands of people out of over $160,000, but also uses the excuse that she is a woman to get away with whatever she damn well pleases. Any form of constructive criticism, even from fellow women, is either ignored or labelled to be sexist against her.

She claims to want gender equality in video games, but in reality, she just wants to use the fact that she was born with a vagina to get free money and sympathy from everyone who crosses her path.

That doesn’t really explain much, as asking people for voluntary donations to a video project is a far cry from “scamming,” especially since she’d asked for far less, and that the misogynist backlash to her project began long before she’d collected anywhere near this amount.

It also doesn’t quite explain why Bendilin felt that a Sarkessian-punching game was the best format to make this, er, critique.

Last night, after learning from the comments here that young Bendilin had a profile on Steam and a Twitter account, I decided to peruse both to see if I could find more clues that might explain his foul game.

On his Steam profile, he’s set forth his basic philosophy of life, video games, and how much women suck:

I think it’s just adorable how absolutely no girls are any good at video games, just like how no woman has ever written a good novel. They are nothing but talk and no action, probably because girls are such emotional creatures and base everything they do on their current feelings and then try to rationalize their actions later. How pathetic.

You know what’s priceless? When a gamer girl posts a pic of herself looking as slutty as possible and then throws a fake fit when people talk to her like she’s a whore. What did you think was going to happen, you dumb broad? Lose thirty pounds.

Sadly, these aren’t terribly rare or original opinions for a young male gamer.

Over on Twitter, Bendilin has offered a number of conflicting explanations for why he felt so much hostility for Sarkeesian and her video project that he felt justified in creating a video game devoted to punching her in the face.

There’s the fiscal argument:

There’s the laziness argument:

There’s the rather strange argument that Sarkeesian is not taking the proper time to research the subject, although she has not yet started the project. (Also, one of the reasons she was asking for money was so that she could take the time to research the subject properly.)

The “nuh-uh you’re wrong” argument:

The “she won’t listen to me argument.” Part one: The Lego Incident

And Part 2, in which our hero explains that making a video game about punching someone in the face is a great way to open a dialogue with them:

Naturally, Bendilin, like most misogynists, fervently denies that he’s a misogynist:

Yep, that’s right. The guy whose Steam profile claims that “absolutely no girls are any good at video games” and that “no woman has ever written a good novel,” and who decided to express his criticism for a video project that hasn’t even started by making a video game in which players punch the woman behind it in the face, is angry that anyone might conclude that he hates women.

Well, Bendilin, if you wanted to defend video games and the gaming community at large from charges of sexism, you’ve done a bang-up job of it.

UPDATE: Bendilin is also an artist! Here, Virgil Texas takes a look at Bendilin’s erotically charged Sonic the Hedgehog art.

That last paragraph and the update contained

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antifeminism douchebaggery irony alert misogyny MRA penises

The brief history of the brief career of the (unofficial) goodwill ambassador from planet Good Men Project

On a fairly regular basis, Man Boobz is visited by commenters of an MRAish disposition. There are many varieties. Some start off by trying to post rape threats and other such unpleasantness, and their comments never see the light of day. Some leave a few irritated comments and head off, never to be seen again. Some manage to stick around long enough to become Man Boobz institutions.

One interesting variety: the ones who come here, they claim, to discuss the issues with us in good faith. In most cases it becomes quickly evident that they are not interested in real discussion at all, as they ignore what most of the commenters here say to them to instead argue with the straw feminists who live in their heads.

Soon many of these alleged good-faith arguers drop the pretense entirely and lash out with nasty personal attacks. At this point they go on moderation, or find themselves banned entirely.

The latest such meltdown was a fairly quick one. For those who don’t regularly read the comments, here’s a brief history of John Anderson’s brief career (so far) as an unofficial goodwill ambassador to Man Boobz from planet Good Men Project.

An anti-feminist dude who generally hangs out at the Good Men Project, Mr. Anderson arrived at Man Boobz Prime on July 2nd, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, eager to learn from and about the feminist commenters here, and to convince some of us to join him and the other commenters at the GMP in healthy and fruitful dialogue.

In one of his first comments here, he explained the reason for his coming here:

I promised some feminists, who I really admire, at The Good Men Project that I would initially engage feminists without assuming that they are misandrist, a very difficult task for me at least. I think that I’ve mostly lived up to that promise so far as I’ve asked for clarifications and I’ve used qualifiers like seems. I can understand if this comment was written in frustration, but understand that I and any new visitor to the site won’t understand the back story if there is one and the comment just comes off as being dismissive of male victimization.

In a further comment he explained that he was trying to do his part to save the Men’s Rights movement from the angry ideologues:

I was on a voice for men a while back. They had nothing but contempt for the GMPers. I’m certain that I’ll cross paths with them. It is my heartfelt intent to reclaim my movement from people who would disgrace it.

Five minutes later, alas, we learned that he had determined we were all a bunch of misandrists after all.

I only promised not to assume that feminists were misandrists. Once proven, it is no longer an assumption.

Oh, wait, not all of us. But we are a bunch of meanies:

I don’t think all the commentators hate men or are necessarily closed minded to other view points. I actually stepped away from a safe space to engage people who don’t see things the way I do. The feeling that I get is that there is great hostility to anyone who may consider men to be victims under any circumstance….

I’ve quoted DOJ and CDC statistics and included page numbers or links on an article that says that we shouldn’t be angry over truthful statistics. I’ve been told that the statistics have been spun. Maybe I should have refrained from that SHOCKED bit. I probably should have considered the feelings of the people on this site. I’d consider apologizing, but too many people here seem mean.

As far as I can tell, he determined that I was a misandrist because I downplayed the fact that more men are murdered than women by writing the following sentence in the OP:

While four times as many men are murdered than women, only 5% of murdered men are killed by “intimates.”

I remain a bit baffled as to how a sentence that starts by noting that four times as many men are murdered than women is downplaying the fact that, well, four times as many men are murdered than women. You can go read the whole discussion yourself and see if you can figure it out.

The meltdown followed not long afterwards. In one comment, Mr. Anderson suggested, as far as I can figure it, that [TW: RAPE APOLOGETICS] women regularly decide whether or not to charge a man with rape after they determine how good their rapist is in bed:

When is a woman responsible for her own rape because it wasn’t worth fighting over? Maybe she liked it and waited to see how good he was before deciding on whether to fight and that whole women don’t report rape thing can’t be a big deal if she didn’t think it was important enough to report. Feminists say you should never blame the victim. What feminists mean is that you should never blame the victim unless the victim is a man.

But he still hoped to lure some of us over to the Good Man Project for more scintillating discussion about how feminists are evil and mean and how dudes like him think women think  about rape. Oh, and that movie about the stripper dudes.

Come by and visit. Right now there are discussions focusing around the objectification of men because of the Magic Mike movie. There are also multiple discussions around men and feminism. Come and visit.

Then, for some reason, he decided to bring up his cock:

Kyrie says,

“Fuck. You.”

No thanks. Not sure if triple bagging it would help. I’m referring to both my cock and your face. I have to have some fun. 🙂

At this point, I put Mr. Anderson on permanent moderation.

Or  tried to anyway. Due to a little glitch, it didn’t take, so Mr. Anderson was able to post freely for a while. Among other things, he tried to explain away that previous comment with this:

David says,

“And that line about cocks and faces wins Mr. Anderson the prize of permanent moderation. Congrats!”

You forgot bags. It’s bags, cocks, and faces. You have to admit, that statement was a classic.

Not so much.

Then he whined about being moderated:

Dude, I can’t even keep up with the comments directed at me. If I have to deal with moderation, the situation would be unworkable. It should earn me props on a voice for men when I decide to return at least until I start commenting on their discussions. It only took two or was it three days to get semi-banned from the site. Gotta be a record.

The only record set was for how quickly Mr. Anderson devolved from an earnest man of alleged good faith to a cock-talking troll.

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antifeminism feminism harassment irony alert links masculinity men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny MRA patriarchy trigger warning violence

Friday links: What About the Men: The Book, and more harassment of Anita Sarkeesian

Longtime Friend of Man Boobz Ozy Frantz, cofounder of the No Seriously What About teh Menz blog, is writing a book with fellow NSWATMer Noah Brand about men and feminism titled, naturally, What About the Men. The first chapter, written by Ozy, is up on the Good Men Project web site, NSWATM’s (sort of) new home. It’s even got footnotes, and illustrations by Barry Deutsch!

Ozy explains the book’s central aim:

We live in a sexist society, one where gender programming starts at birth (though the advent of the sonogram has allowed parents to get a head start by painting the nursery pink or blue and stocking up in advance on gendered toys and clothes) and is so pervasive as to be inescapable. Feminism has done an excellent job analyzing and challenging the ways that these assigned and enforced gender roles damage and deform the lives of women. The same tools of analysis can be applied to the damage and deformation that men suffer. And that damage, sad to say, is severe.

Yes, that says “CLICK TO HIT HER!”

Meanwhile, over on The New Statesman, Helen Lewis looks at the continuing harassment of Anita Sarkeesian, the women who dared to ask people to donate money for a video series on sexism in video games and thereby unleashed a misogynistic shitstorm.

One of the most disturbing examples of harassment: an online game in which players are invited to “beat up Anita Sarkeesian.” Lewis censors some of the images, but not others, so let me just put a TRIGGER WARNING for depictions of violence against women, including a grotesquely photoshopped “beaten up” Sarkeesian. Anyone who thinks Sarkeesian and her supporters were making too big a deal of the harassment needs to go look at these images in Lewis’ article here. (The game itself, posted on Newgrounds.com, has now been removed.)

Again, this is all because Sarkeesian asked people to donate for a video project. If they felt like it was worthwhile. That’s all she did. And this is what she got in return: someone so angry that Sarkeesian was pointing out sexism in video games that he literally sat down and made a game inviting angry internetters to “beat this bitch up.” Irony doesn’t even begin to cover it.

On Think Progress, Alyssa Rosenberg underlines why we need to take this kind of harassment seriously:

[A]nyone who thinks that feminists who push back hard against online harassment are being oversensitive needs to understand that we’re all trying to keep ourselves from becoming Anita Sarkeesians. No matter how strong you are, and no matter how much support you have, this kind of concentrated campaign of harassment affects the targets of it. And the goal of these campaigns is to terrorize people into silence. It’s not disagreement. It’s not creative trolling. It’s deployment of a weapon.

But it’s just as important to point out that Sarkeesian wasn’t silenced; in addition to helping her raise much more money than she had originally asked for, those who attacked her simply reinforced (and helped to further publicize) the argument she was making — in the case of the “beat up Anita Sarkeesian” game, quite directly indeed. The cowards and assholes who try to shut down feminists online with this sort of harassment are not only losers — they’re losing.

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antifeminism evil women hypocrisy irony alert johntheother men who should not ever be with women ever MGTOW misandry misogyny MRA neckbeard rights oppressed men racism

MRAs to women: You make us hate you! (Also, don’t call JohnTheOther a neckbeard. He’s clean-shaven!)

Racists – victim blamers extraordinaire — like to pretend that their racism isn’t their fault, that they’ve been driven to their racism by the bad behavior of some members of the group they’re bigoted against. Do a search for the phrase “I don’t hate blacks, but” and you will find thousands of examples of this “logic” at its crudest. “I don’t think blacks are ignorant just the NIGGERS,” one YouTube commenter writes, encapsulating the racist “logic” in a phrase.

Misogynists are fond of making similar “arguments” about women. As one commenter on the Scott Adams blog puts it:

I don’t hate women, but I have a pretty low opinion of women overall. I think they have poor priorities, they have poor analytical skills, they tend to be disorganized, they tend to be impulsive, and they think the world revolves around their feelings. I don’t think all women are like that, but it’s the impression I have of the gender in general, and I don’t like those traits.

Naturally, variations of this general argument (such as it is) abound in the “manosphere.” “Misogynists are not born they are made,” writes MRA/MGTOW elder and proud misogynist ZenPriest in an oft-cited rant titled “Hate Bounces.”

“Once, a long time ago when the world was young, I loved women with all my heart and soul,”ZenPriest (also known as Zed) writes. But then along came feminism, which ruined women so thoroughly that poor ZenPriest found himself more or less forced to become a woman-hater:

I began to see women as vicious creatures whose only agenda when it came to me, or any man, was to see how much they could get from the man – then when he had nothing left to give because they had taken it all, toss him out with yesterday’s garbage. In short – as nothing but users. …

I took to avoiding women, particularly groups of them, because I could never sit quietly and put up with the bashing and would always challenge it, which ended me up in a lot of fights and added greatly the count of times that I got called “misogynist.”

Gosh, why would anyone who “see[s] women as vicious creatures” get called a misogynist?

[A]fter 3 decades of listening to it, and hating it, and trying to keep the animosity which had been building in me over it … I caved in and began to really hate women. …

I will not allow most women in my house unless I have known her a long time and she is old enough to have escaped being infected with the plague of man hating or is escorted by someone I trust, nor will I enter theirs except on the same conditions. If I pass a woman stranded on the road, I will not stop to help her because it is as likely as not that she will be afraid of me.  …

I changed from a man who loved women and thought they were just about the greatest thing in the world, to a man who can’t stand them, or anything about them.

And of course it is all the fault of women and their alleged incessant man-hatery:

Man bashing and man hating harms women, because it makes men hate them back – eventually. A puppy returns love for love, but if you beat it will eventually turn mean and will one day turn on you when you raise your fist or your stick (or the club of words) to hit it. Men are no different.

As this last bit makes clear, this “she made me do it” logic is the very same logic used by abusers to justify their abuse.

Now our old friend JohnTheOther has offered a similar blame-the-ladies explanation as to why he’s developed what he calls an “indifference to female opinion.” In his telling, the straw that broke the camel’s back was some unnamed feminist who had the temerity to use the word “neckbeard” in an internet posting.

The culture of easy, casual insult by women against average men, creeps, neckbeards, mother’s-basement-dweller and so on, has a effect which might not be recognized by women. Guys generally don’t need to be told they’re held in contempt as a group, our wider culture makes this sparklingly clear. However, individual instances of circumstantial ad-hom have the very real effect of making men not care about women’s opinions.

Yeah, that’s why these guys don’t give a shit about what women say.

Naturally, Mr. TheOther feels the need to tell us that 1) he doesn’t have a neckbeard and 2) he has a (presumably human) girlfriend.

Am I a neck-beard? No, I’m clean shaven, Im not an online gamer, I have a girlfriend, a career, I dress well et-cetera. But whenever I see some casual, throw away comment like creeper, neck-beard or other minor belittling insult used to describe average men, it cements my not giving a shit about the opinions of women.

After being criticized for his blatant misogyny by a commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit (virtually the only MRA site online where misogyny is ever called out), Mr. TheOther altered that final bit to read “it cements my not giving a shit about the opinions offered.” He evidently thinks that changing the wording of this one sentence, and complaining about “quote-mining” will convince readers that the misogynistic argument set forth in detail in the rest of the post somehow isn’t misogyny. (And, on the Men’s Rights subreddit, that ploy seems to have worked.)

Naturally, like so many misogynists, Mr. TheOther insists he’s really not a woman-hater:

I don’t hate women, I don’t believe in any “back to the kitchen” nonsense, or any other female-targeted belittlement. What I’m talking about is my personal attitude towards women’s opinions, their utterances, their writing, their thoughts, their contribution to society. If you are a woman reading this, that means your thoughts, ideas, speech, writing and so on.

Well, that clears it up. You don’t hate women; you just don’t give a shit what women think or say or do. Obviously there’s no bigotry in that!

Utterly dismissing “female opinion” because some woman called you a neckbeard: Men’s Rights activism at its finest!

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antifeminism antifeminst women irony alert misogyny

The Obamacare decision proves that ladies shouldn’t be put in positions of power

So, as you probably already know, the three female Supreme Court Justices — the Justicesses? — all voted to uphold Obamacare; they made up the majority of the majority in this decision.

This gal isn’t too happy about it:

Hey lady, if you’re right, and ladies are too emotional and illogical to trust to make good decisions, why should we listen to anything you (a lady) have to say about this?

Pic found on Twitter in a tweet from MattyTalks. MattyTalks is hilarious. If you’re on Twitter, follow him.

Also, there are lots of people who are now, in the wake of the Supremes’ decision, threatening to move to Canada to escape the specter of socialized medicine. They’ll be in for a surprise, eh?

EDITED TO ADD: Longtime Man Boobz troll Anthony Zarat and a few friends have marched over to Feministe to argue that the Obamacare decision will “cost the lives of countless thousands of men and boys. This is our darkest hour.” It’s really pretty hilarious. Check it out. 

I know someone here did a point-by-point rebuttal of Mr. Zarat’s delusional “analysis” of the allegedly anti-male bias of the bill; it would be worth reposting over there if anyone remembers where that was.

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douchebaggery irony alert misogyny MRA reddit the c-word the enigma that is ladies

Men’s Rights Redditors baffled by women who don’t like the c-word

So the fellas over on the Men’s Rights Subreddit were having a little discussion the other day about the c-word, and wondering just why so many ladies get so offended by that word. I mean, it’s just a word. (Not like “creep” which is the worst possible thing anyone could possibly call someone else, and a clear abuse of their human rights.)

Funcuz, for his part, blamed Oprah for the unpopularity of the c-word among women:

Hardwarequestions, in a rather circular manner, blamed the offensiveness of the word “cunt” on women, for being offended in the first place:

The only one who seemed to think the insult was genuinely a big deal was expletive-deleted, who rather likes it that way:

Men’s Rights Activism at its finest!

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actual activism antifeminism irony alert MRA MRA paradox rape rape jokes violence

Big news in the fight against prison rape. MRAs oblivious.

There is good news, and bad news, and completely predictable news in the fight against prison rape. The good news: the Justice Department last week announced a major new initiative designed to fight against prison rape. The bad news: it’s being opposed by right-wing ideologues. As Think Progress explains:

This week, the Department of Justice published new standards addressing the epidemic of rape and sexual abuse in our nation’s prisons. The guidelines, which apply immediately to federal prisons and give financial incentives for states to comply, are a laudable, widely praised, and long overdue step in combating rape in the United States.

The American Action Forum, a Wall Street-funded group whose C(4) runs millions of dollars in attack ads against Democrats, responded by lambasting the move as too “costly” and “complicated.” …

The Weekly Standard echoed AAF’s response, bemoaning the cost of preventing people from being raped in prison. The total expected cost is less than 1 percent of the overall cost of our prison system and ultimately “end up saving money — for example, by avoiding the medical costs of injuries suffered by rape victims,” according to the New York Times.

The completely predictable news? Men’s Rights Activists are completely oblivious to all this.

If the Men’s Rights movement were truly concerned with helping men, rather than playing “oppression Olympics” and complaining about feminists and women in general, they would be all over this issue. But I have seen nothing about this on any site in the manosphere, aside from one post on the Men’s Rights subreddit that drew all of six (mostly ignorant) comments. (Looking through one large thread on the subject of prison rape that was recently on r/mensrights’ front page, I found zero references to the Justice Department’s new initiative.)

What accounts for this obliviousness? It could be because MRAs tend to regard the Obama administration as a tool of our (imaginary) feminazi overlordsladies. Or because they would have to acknowledge that women are also raped in prison. But I think the real reason is that MRAs are so disconnected from real activists working in the real world to combat prison rape that they are completely unaware of any of this.

If you are interested in getting involved, or just learning more about the issue, I’d suggest checking out the website of the group Just Detention International, which campaigns against prison rape.

For more links, see this post of mine.

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anti-Semitism antifeminism bullying douchebaggery harassment irony alert men who should not ever be with women ever misandry misogyny MRA oppressed men the c-word

Point out sexism in video games, get called the c-word. Thanks, gamers!

Many of you are no doubt aware of this already, but I just wanted to highlight a recent appalling example of the rampant misogyny in the gaming community online: the harassment that feminist pop culture analyst and video blogger Anita Sarkeesian has gotten for her Tropes Vs Women Kickstarter project, a video project designed to “explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.”

Her YouTube page has been inundated with comments calling her, among other things, a “Dumb ass nazi [obscene gender-related slur],”  “faggo.. I mean lesbian,” and “the reason why womens are the inferior gender for the whole history of mankind.” IRONY ALERT: while some are calling her a Nazi, or comparing her to the KKK, others are denouncing her as a “bolshevik feminist jewess” and a “fucking ovendodger.”

And still others are defacing her Wikipedia entry with all sorts of vile shit. (Here’s a screenshot.)

Here’s her discussion of the harassment, which includes screenshots of some of the comments.

An Escapist piece on the harassment, which is where I got the quotes above.

A Jezebel piece, “When There’s So Much Bullshit Online, You Forget How to Feel.”

A piece on The Mary Sue, “The All-Too-Familiar Harassment Against Feminist Frequency, and What The Gaming Community Can Do About It”

Kotaku also weighed in, leading one commenter there to note that similarly misogynistic comments appear there all the time.

Meanwhile, over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, temple117 garners 138 net upvotes for a post urging poor oppressed men to “Fight back! Sexism exists for males too, support these men in their expose of gender tropes in video games!”

And, joy of joys, Men’s Rights buffoon Bernard Chapin has weighed in on the controversy as well. After dismissing the harassment — using a “funny” voice, apparently the most powerful weapon in his rhetorical arsenal — he suggests that women complain about video games because games are a male thing, and women are jealous that men are paying attention to something other than them. “Whatever the male is enjoying himself at,” he says, “it diverts him from taking orders; that’s got to be the focus of their ire.” Then he accuses Sarkeesian of being without “honor” because she’s asking for money to fund her project. (Might want to take that critique up with your pal Paul “Donate Today” Elam, dude.) His video is below, if you want to waste your time with it.

But before you get to that, here’s something a bit more encouraging on the gamer misogyny front: Comedian/actress/gamer Aisha Tyler’s take-no-prisoners takedown of the misogynist assholes who attacked her for allegedly ruining an Ubisoft press conference at the recent E3 gaming extravaganza, apparently by being too female or something. Here’s a screenshot of her comments, and a surprisingly un-disgusting Reddit discussion of the controversy.

Here’s Bern:

Categories
$MONEY$ antifeminism antifeminst women dozens of upvotes evil women FemRAs hypocrisy irony alert men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny MRA oppressed men reactionary bullshit the spearhead threats your time will come

Scented Candles Oppress Men: The Spearhead at its self-proclaimed best.

Woman oppressing men and destroying civilization with a SCENTED MOTHERFUCKING CANDLE!!

Men’s Rights Activists and manosphere misogynists love to complain that I “cherry pick” quotes in an attempt to make them look bad. Which makes it especially ironic that all too often when I call them out on some particular bit of bullshit, they more or less double down on that bullshit, reiterating and in many cases amplifying the terrible things they originally said.

Several days ago, I wrote about a Spearhead post from W.F. Price with the priceless title “After 25, Women Are Just Wasting Time.” It was appalling even by Spearhead standards. Price used the untimely death of a talented young writer named Marina Keegan as an opportunity to rehash the belief, widely held in the manosphere, that women over the age of 25 who haven’t managed to snag themselves a “good husband” are “just wasting time,” growing older and uglier and less appealing to men. (Evidently, women’s appeal to men is the only thing that really matters about them.)

Price’s article inspired numerous comments from Spearheaders that were even more grotesquely misogynistic and cruel than his own post; Price at least pretended to care about the dead girl, even though his post was a crass and opportunistic insult to her memory.

And it inspired one regular Man Boobz commenter, a 26-year-old woman, to wade into the muck that is the Spearhead’s comments section to point out that Price’s grand narrative of female decline after age 25 has no relation whatsoever to her own life story:

I’m 26 years old. 27 terrifyingly soon. I am nothing like the person I was when I graduated college.

After originally getting a film degree, I’ve just started nursing school.
I’m living on the other side of the country and loving the different culture here.
I’m dating a wonderful guy who mysteriously didn’t dump me on my 25th birthday.
I’m doing difficult, not always fun, but ultimately socially useful work, work I couldn’t imagine myself doing when I graduated college.

Since I graduated college, I’ve read more books, worked on more movies, learned more skills, lifted more weight, traveled more places, marched in more protests, gotten published more times, saved more lives than I thought I ever would.

And I’m still only 26.

You think I’m going to stop protesting and writing and working the wild Saturday midnight shift in the ER before I’m 30? Before I’m 60?

Or do you think it doesn’t matter because I might not be as fuckable then?

Well then fuck you. I’m 26 and I got miles to go.

–

(Oh, and I’m way better at sex now. Guys who thought I hit my “expiration date” just around the time I was first learning what a Kegel was, you are missing out.)

The Spearheaders responded, predictably enough, with downvotes and insults and a lot of mainsplainy comments suggesting that she’s regret it forever if she doesn’t get married ASAP and start popping out children.

The strangest comment of the bunch came from a Spearhead “Shieldmaiden” (that’s what they call female commenters on The Spearhead, for reals) by the name of Andie, who launched into a barely coherent tirade that somehow revolved around, er, SCENTED CANDLES!

Price, after seeing Andie’s rant mocked by the commenters here, decided to feature it today as the Spearhead “Comment of the Week.” So without further ado, here is what Price considers to be the Spearhead community at its best:

@26 year old woman

Let’s see how you feel when you’re 29 and the end of everything possible is right at your doorstep. Hell, lots of women are infertile at 26. Done. You won’t do everything. You won’t be a mother.

And if that doesn’t bother you, darlin’, you ain’t a woman.

And if your plans are to actually BE a mother (as in do the damn work), you are already in very deep water.

Your resume will never put his chubby little arms around you and tell you he loves you, like a child will. Your resume will never give you grandchildren, like your children might. Your resume will never share in all your joys, all your sorrows, all your triumphs, all your tragedies, like your husband will.

But you WILL be able to rape that resume of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS over your lifetime. Yay!

The fastest growing consumer product category: scented candles. SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES.

Yes, 26 year old woman, all your education and opportunity and rights have resulted in millions of children raised without fathers, the total destruction of the family, the rise of GIANT ASS government to give all those wymyns a place to work (doing utterly useless shit) and what was it for? What did we gain?

SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES!!

Nicely done, ladies. Really good job.

Fuck you, bitch. My daughters are coming for you. And millions of daughters just like mine. We see you, you superficial piece of trash. You have cost us our lives. For patchouli candles.

You will pay.

Go back and read @26 year old woman’s comment, then read Andie’s again. Quite a contrast, wouldn’t you say?

I should note that when Price first posted the quote, he evidently left out the last few paragraphs; perhaps even he realized they were a tad over the line as a response to a woman whose only real “crime” was telling the Spearheaders that her life was interesting and fulfilling to her, and that she wasn’t planning on having any babies in the foreseeable future. (And if they didn’t approve of her life, too fucking bad for them.)

In the comments to Price’s “Comment of the Week” post, HL offers this thought:

Every time something like this comes up, it becomes ever more apparent that the ignorance, hate mongering, bigotry and fallacies rests so much more heavily on the side of the feminists.

To paraphrase Rick James, lack of self-awareness is a hell of a drug.