We Hunted The MammothThis seems like a completely reasonable course of action:
Oh, by the way, I know a guy who’s a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and he can fly and turn invisible.
Not at the same time, though. When he forgets and turns invisible while flying, he plummets to earth.
Tom Martin, a former gender studies student at the London School of Economics, recently became a minor celebrity amongst Men’s Rights activists and other angry men when he sued his alma mater for alleged sexism against men.
He’s now had his case thrown out of court. Let’s go to the Camden New Journal for details:
Tom Martin, 39, who lives in Covent Garden, claimed he suffered “anti-male discrimination” while studying for a master’s degree in gender, media and culture at the world-famous university in Holborn.
Representing himself at his application for a trial at the Central London County Court on Tuesday, Mr Martin complained of a lack of men-only sessions in the university’s gym and the preponderance of posters in the corridors advertising services for women without the presence of similar materials geared towards men.
Mr Martin, who describes himself as a feminist, said “hard” chairs in the library were uncomfortable for men and that a “male blaming culture” was evident in course materials, which “ignored men’s issues” and focused on wrongs done by them.
Damn those misandrist chairs and their man-hating hardness!
The judge didn’t buy it, saying Martin’s case had essentially no chance of success. He threw out the case and ordered Martin to pay LSE’s legal costs.
Martin, welcome to reality.
On Twitter, Martin responded to the news by calling his critics “whores.” One of many examples:
But I was really discriminated against, you whores!
And, yes, his Twitter handle is indeed Sexismbusters.org.
EDITED TO ADD: Actual headline today on What Men are Saying About Women:
EDITED AGAIN TO ADD: Tom Martin has replied to this post in the comments. Some highlights:
My legal complaint did NOT involve a complaint about the seating. You have been misled by the press – The Times and the West End Extra/Camden New Journal both mysteriously got it wrong.
One year prior to joining the university, when visiting its library, I did complain, that the seating being hard created a greater disadvantage for men than for women, as men have considerably smaller weight-bearing buttock pads than women, and men are heavier too – so for men, on average heavier than women, have more weight bearing down onto a pad which is approximately four times smaller than women’s on average – according to a BBC documentary on the subject.
He then details his attempts to fight this grave injustice. Also, there’s this:
[S]everal comments here are confusing ‘whore’ with ‘slut’. A slut has sex freely, which I am all for. Freedom of association is the ultimate in humanity. A whore charges for sex. Even if a woman is a virgin, but is waiting for Mr Right to buy her something, she’s a whore.
It’s counter-intuitive, but a lot of professional feminists are whores. They expect the government and men to do them special favours. They make up stories to convince men and government to believe that we all owe women something.
But really, if someone were keeping a tab, then…
Women owe men five years pension.
Women owe men some National Service.
Women owe men some inventions.
Women owe men positive discrimination in university curricula.
Women owe men some child access.
It’s women’s round at the bar too.
For the whole thing, see here.
For more charming quotes from Tom, see this post on the blog Butterflies and Wheels.
What’s the best way forward for the Men’s Rights movement today? About the only thing I’ve been able to conclude from this discussion in the Men’s Rights subreddit is that it will more than likely involve heavy use of the word “cunt.” Men’s Rights redditors sure do love the word “cunt.” (See here for the rest of this particular discussion.)
This next bit follows directly from the above:
Yep, you heard it right:
To be classified as a hate group by such a large organization is the first step to gaining wider recognition.
If that’s the case, Men’s Rights Redditors, why are you so mad at the SPLC? Why aren’t you sending it thank-you notes?
Also, just a point of fact: The SPLC report didn’t actually classify the Men’s Rights subreddit as a hate group. It just pointed out that r/mensrights is full of misogynists. But apparently a lot of Men’s Rights Redditors want to take that whole hate group thing and run with it. You go, boys (and sometimes, oddly, girls)!
Beta males! Do you want to score with the pretty ladies? The Heartiste formerly known as Roissy has a suggestion for you: figure out when your favorite pretty lady is having cotton pony rodeo time – sorry, her period — and make your move then! Apparently, according to SCIENCE, that’s when the pretty ladies will be most receptive to your pathetic, hamhanded beta advances.
Let’s let the master explain:
[D]uring the three weeks a woman is not ovulating (and especially during her menstruation) her desire is shifted toward beta provider males. … To put this in the simplest terms possible, a woman who is hot enough to bang greater alphas will subconsciously gravitate to lesser alphas as her ovaries power down for three weeks. A plain jane who makes herself receptive to greater betas when ovulating will subconsciously begin to warm to the attentions of lesser betas reading her poetry after her hormones stabilize post-ovulation.
But fellas, don’t actually expect her to stoop to having sex with the likes of you.
I don’t mean she is suddenly going to be attracted to the opposite of the alpha males she craves when egging out. Instead, I mean she will become more indulgent of men who are somewhat more beta than the last alpha male she banged, or wished to bang, when she was ovulating. …
[B]eta males are not going to suddenly see action for three weeks with the women who aren’t ovulating. What they might see is more receptiveness — more openness — to their sloppy, guileless flirtations from those women.
And if by some weird miracle you beta dudes are actually dating a woman, Heartiste is a little more optimistic for you:
[E]njoy your two or three tepid bangs during the three weeks you are reasonably safe from the depredations of your sweet girlfriend’s behavioral modification egg assault and any interloper alpha males who might be conveniently available to her. No, you won’t ever get her to scream “choke the living shit out of me and plunge your divine cock into my tight puckered asshole as far as it’ll go until I’m bleeding tears of exquisite pain ps I saved my incredibly lubricated pussy all for you” like Olivia Munn, but at least you get to wrap up your two minute tenderly administered intimacy sessions scraping your beta peen along her dry vagina walls with twenty minute cuddleramas and a bloated chickflix queue.
Oy. I can’t really keep up the sarcasm after that. I just feel bad that the genuinely charming and hilarious Olivia Munn (no sarcasm here) has been pulled into Heartiste’s strange fantasy world.
In the war of ideas, it is important to be well-armed. And that’s why one brave antifeminist warrior named Roy Scott Movrich has supplied his fellow warriors with some potent verbal ammunition, a full clip of misogynist insults designed to reduce all women in the immediate area to blubbering tears.
As Roy explains:
Feminists have gotten away with shaming language for too long. Far too long.
Its time we got our own back.
And since women in general have not stood up to defend men, it stands that all women are tarred with the same brush. Therefore ALL women are to be denigrated equally.
Fair’s fair.
Here are a choice sampling of insults to deride women with.
Try them and see. I did. And watch their ordure (translation: s**t) hit the roof!
A few of Roy’s insults are borrowed from literature (mostly from Shakespeare), but most of them are originals. In a manner of speaking.
He starts out with a puzzler:
Your’s is even smaller than mine.
Presumably he is suggesting that cis women/feminists have some sort of symbolic penis, and that this symbolic penis of theirs is smaller than his non-symbolic penis
He continues on with several other comments in this vein:
It’ll be way bigger than anything you’ll ever have.
The one you try to have is even smaller than mine.
And of course this classic:
Mine isn’t too small, your cooch is too wide/large/loose.
Then we get some vibrator-shaming:
Oooh! Bad mood! Did you run out of batteries?
And some wildly unoriginal negs:
You sound really old.
You don’t look your age. [Pause] You look [longer pause] old.
You look good enough to be my great-great grandmother.
This one might not be terribly successful with total strangers:
You were/are a lousy lover.
And then it’s back to the vagina:
You must be having constant periods.
It must be cotton pony rodeo time huh?
Note to self: Find out if anyone in the history of the world has ever referred to a woman’s period as “cotton pony rodeo time.”
Then on to cats, spinster-shaming, and general unpleasantness:
Did one of your cats just die?
You must not be married yet.
Can’t have kids huh?
There’s nothing a woman can do for me that my right hand can’t do better.
Even dung beetles are higher than women and feminists.
And back to the vagina again:
You obviously have one of those super large and deep ginas a man has to strap a plank to his back to prevent him falling into.
Note to self: Find out if there is anyone who refers to vaginas as “ginas” who is not a misogynist asscrack.
If you need more, Roy suggests that you can basically go with
[a]nything that implies her plumbing isn’t clean, has diseases or a foul smell.
After delivering this list (and some Shakespeare quotes), Roy somewhat confusingly concludes that insulting women is actually a waste of time:
[A]t the end of the day, given that women are devoid of logic and wit, using such choice insults is wanton waste.
Better to ignore them completely.
And since modern women, with their over-inflated sense of entitlement cannot abide being ignored, this is just as dramatic and effective as any insult.
In other words, the chance that Roy has ever used any of these insults in a conversation with a woman is roughly zero.
Reading this blog, you might get the impression that Men’s Rights activists lack a sense of humor. Not so! Some of them even make their own hilarious comics! I’d like to celebrate three of the finest MRA cartoons I’ve seen thus far in the first edition of what I’d like to call the MRA Comics Cavalcade. Click the thumbnails to go to the (full-sized) comics themselves.
In this edition of the popular The Pigman Cometh, the aforementioned Pigman, who has apparently killed a woman, dances with her corpse while spouting humorous remarks about how women and marriage suck. This comic is written by one dude, and drawn by another. Yes, it takes two people to produce masterpieces like this.Two separate people.
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In this NSFW cartoon found on the blog Wimminz, two evil feminists talk evilly about divorce and park in a handicapped parking space. Just like real feminists would! And then a guy has sex with, apparently, some sex dolls?
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And, finally, in this edition of plasticBrickAutomaton, an evil feminist door-to-door saleswoman tries to sell some dude a weird and incorrect caricature of postmodernism. The guy cleverly parries her attempts to indoctrinate him by attaching a baby to a balloon and letting it float away, to ultimately meet its demise. (One imagines.) This got more than 100 upvotes when it was posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit.
More MRA Comics Cavalcades to come!
Sometimes I ask myself: what is it that I really hope to accomplish with this website, aside from entertaining myself and my readers, and exposing misogynist assholes for who they are. There’s a part of me that still hopes that someday, something I write will cause some misogynist and/or Men’s Rightser out there to develop a modicum of self-awareness, look at what they’ve been saying or doing, and say to themselves, “I’m really kind of a tool, aren’t I? Maybe I should stop.”
When the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the Men’s Rights movement came out, I hoped it might have a similar sort of effect. Or that, even if it didn’t persuade any MRAs out there that they were wrong, it might at least convince a few that they were going about things the wrong way. Nope. On the Men’s Rights subreddit, at least, it seems to have sent many of the regulars into an indignant tizzy, and they have doubled down on their peculiar brand of politics-by-whining-online.
Consider this post:
Yes, that’s right. Some Men’s Rights Redditors seem to think that the best way to convince the world that they’re not part of a hate group is to continue to celebrate a self-admitted child abuser who urged men to firebomb courthouses and police stations and kill people.
Then there’s this post, currently the top post on the subreddit:
Wow, if the Men’s Rights subreddit had anything to do with that, that would indeed be a victory. As one regular put it:
Thing is, I read r/mensrights pretty regularly, and I don’t remember any campaign there to protect the rights of fishermen in New Zealand.
Turns out that’s because the campaign, such as it was, consisted of one post some months back, which got all of 11 upvotes at the time. The current post in which r/mensrights congratulates itself for its “victory” has gotten, last I checked, 120 upvotes, more than ten times that. Simplecosine’s self-congratulatory comment in the new thread has gotten 36 upvotes. The comment in the original thread asking r/mensrightsers to send an email to the US Secretary of State’s office got … one upvote. In other words, only a handful of Men’s Rights Redditors even noticed the original post, much less sent along an email.
Reading one of the linked news articles makes clear the real reason the State Department opened an investigation: a six-month long, three-continent wide investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek revealing abuses in the industry.
The Men’s Rights subreddit: Taking Credit for Shit They Didn’t Do Since 2008.
And then there’s this post:
I’ve got nothing to say about this one — it’s basically self-refuting — except that I’m sort of bemused by the notion that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “semi-women group.” Uh, what is that exactly? A group with some women in it? A group that doesn’t think women are all a bunch of evil bitches? The horror!
Oh, Men’s Rights movement. You’ll never change, will you?
EDITED TO ADD: And speaking of never changing, here’s how one Men’s Rights redditor responded to my comments there suggesting that maybe, just maybe, MRAs should actually denounce and distance themselves from someone calling for terrorism:
Let me just highlight that bit at the end again:
[T]he cost to the establishment to maintain the status quo in regards to divorce, custody, etc. must be made so high that it’s just no longer feasible. If that means instilling abject fear into the hearts of judges, cops and legislators by making them think their careers and/or lives could be forfeit unless they change their attitudes towards men, then so be it.
Trying to instill fear for one’s life in your opponents: that is the very definition of terrorism.
PROTIP: If you don’t want people to think you’re hateful, you probably shouldn’t talk about how the notion of making feminists afraid gives you a misogyny-boner. Or give dudes who say shit like this any upvotes:
Actually, here at Man Boobz we still chuckle about you guys. Pretty much all the time.
Also, Demonspawn? Complaining about women having the right to vote? Probably not a great PR move either.
Welcome to the fifth and final day of the Man Boobz Pledge Drive. If you haven’t already, please consider clicking the little button below and sending a few bucks my way.
Thanks! And, once again, big thanks to all who’ve already donated. I’ve been amazed and humbled by the response, which was greater than I had ever expected. Seriously, you rock. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:
[TW for rape apologism and domestic violence.]
Paul Elam of A Voice for Men has responded to the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the Men’s Rights Movement with an letter to the organization’s head. Apparently, the SPLC is confused, and AVFM isn’t hateful at all! Indeed, it’s like the opposite of hateful. Loveful, you might call it. Here’s Elam:
Contrary to what readers of your site may be led to believe, the goals of SPLC and AVfM are quite similar: We both work to identify groups who seek to oppress others, and inform the public of the inequities they would perpetuate. … The work of AVfM is vital and, despite what you may think, not dissimilar from the goals and aims of the SPLC.
Indeed, AVFM might better be thought of as “a human rights organization.”
Elam also clears up a little matter of terminology:
[T]he term “mangina” is not a euphemism for “weak men,” but rather a label for men who enable and excuse female misconduct – ranging from physical violence to exculpatory false reporting of crimes … – solely because the offender is female (and to gain women’s approval).
I think I can speak for all manginas when I say, thanks for the clarification, Paul!
At the end of the letter, Elam gets all Martin Luther King on us:
Those who fear truth, and brand it as hatred and bigotry, hide behind the worst kind of cowardice – the sniveling complacency that for generations allowed the rich to starve the poor, for one person to own another because of the color of their skin, and for the officers at Nuremberg to claim they were “just following orders.” …
This movement will grow, as it has since its inception, and the time will come when the SPLC (and other groups) must admit our fundamental similarities and aspirations. I am inviting you, with open arms, to do just that.
The alternative, I fear, is that you come down on the wrong side of history, with the likes of Dred Scott as your legacy.
Inspiring stuff, Paul. Nazis, Dred Scott– you totally nailed it. Who could possibly doubt your passion, or your deeply moral vision?
Here’s a link to his letter.
Oh, wait, that wasn’t a link to his letter. That was a link to a post of his in which he tells a feminist that:
I am not going to stop. You see, I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.
Here’s the link to his letter.
Oops! That was actually a link to a post in which he suggests that “vermin” like me (and another feminist writer who has also been critical of the Men’s Rights movement) deserve to be killed. Or have something awful and permanent happen to us that would solve “the problem” that is us. He’s a little vague.
Here, at long last, is the link.
Oh, sorry, that’s actually a link to a post in which Paul puckishly suggested that October, currently designated as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, should be renamed “Bash a Violent Bitch Month.” As he explained:
I’d like to make it the objective for the remainder of this month, and all the Octobers that follow, for men who are being attacked and physically abused by women – to beat the living shit out of them. I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles.
And then make them clean up the mess.
What a wit!
Anyway, here’s the letter.
Gosh darn it. I’m not doing too well with links at the moment. That’s actually a link to a post in which Elam suggests that women who drink and go home with men are “freaking begging” to be raped:
Damn near demanding it.
And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.
I guess that’s what they call “human rights advocacy” right there.
Ok, finally, the letter:
Damn. That wasn’t even by Paul. No, that was a guest post on A Voice for Men by a fellow named Keith, with an explanation for why men don’t just beat women all the time. (It’s not why you’d think!)
Let’s face it guys if it was about size or domination, or patriarchy or anything other than power, wouldn’t we be kicking the shit out of women on a daily basis in the streets? The only reason men don’t randomly pound the shit out of women who can’t keep their mouths shut, is because they don’t mean anything to us and they have no power over or in our lives. They are not worth the trouble! That’s the only reason there isn’t bodies strewn all over the streets.
That’s enough human rights advocacy for me for now. Here’s the actual link to Elam’s letter.
—
This post contains some
[TW for the comments to this post; discussions of rape and abuse.]
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization devoted to tracking and exposing hate groups, has just published a detailed report on the misogyny and violent rhetoric so pervasive in the Men’s Rights Movement — as well as the actual violence inspired by this sort of hatred of women. It’s a piece you all should read, even though few of the details will be new to long-time readers of this blog.
Arthur Goldwag, an expert on conspiracy-mongers and the far right, argues (I think correctly) that the Men’s Rights movement is largely a backlash against the many successes of feminism over the last several decades:
It’s not much of a surprise that significant numbers of men in Western societies feel threatened by dramatic changes in their roles and that of the family in recent decades. Similar backlashes, after all, came in response to the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and other major societal revolutions. What is something of a shock is the verbal and physical violence of that reaction.
[Thomas] Ball’s suicide brought attention to an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations.
The Men’s Rights Movement, as it exists today, is not a civil rights movement; it is a regressive, hateful reaction against a civil rights movement — that is, feminism.
Those who truly care about the rights of men, and who are not motivated by a hatred of women or feminism, need to repudiate the hate and the violent rhetoric of the Men’s Rights Movement as it exists today. Only then can there be a Men’s Rights Movement worthy of the name.
EDITED TO ADD: The SPLC has also put up a guide to some of the more hateful sites in the manosphere. Longtime readers will be familiar with most of them.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: And a piece debunking some Men’s Rights Myths.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN, AGAIN: The discussion of the SPLC report on the Men’s Rights Subreddit is surprisingly reasonable, so far. (I mean, compared to what I expected. Meanwhile, over in this thread, the Men’s Rightsers are behaving as they usually do.)