We Hunted The Mammoth>Two influential blogs in the “manosphere” — there may be more, I don’t know — have now posted the names and contact information of Julian Assange’s accusers; I won’t link to the posts. Clearly the purpose of doing this is to encourage harassment of these women. Disgraceful.
EDIT: Some asshole keeps posting the contact info here so I am moderating comments for now.
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| See, they ARE children! |
More insane misogyny from the “manosphere.” Part 4 in what could easily turn into a 10 billion part series.Today’s theme: Women are children. I’ve bolded the best — as in worst — bits.
Women are: Children who don’t deserve the right to vote.
Just as those who oppossed the female vote 100 years ago predicted, women will vote for what’s best for women as a group only, and the politicians that cater to them. Little else matters to them, especially men and children. Convincing them to give up any power at all, for the good of society as a whole, is absolutely fruitless. They won’t do it unless forced to through a period of civil instability or anarchy, which is exactly where the breakdown of the family and disenfranchisement of men has us headed towards. But don’t tell THEM that. They don’t want to hear it. They’re high-functioning children, and they vote.
Women are: Retarded children with guns
Some say that women are children.
I think that women are way below children.Imagine a retarded child playing with a machine gun and you will have an accurate picture of women.
Pathetic, yes they are…
What a curse it must be to be born a woman..
Women are: Lying, cookie-stealing children
I think one of the absolute best things men can do with women is follow the advice of so many of those “misogynists” of old, and view women as children. … Of course, it is not actually that they are children. It is more likely that they do not develop the same sense of principle and justice to navigate the world, because society enables them not to have to. … They exist somewhere in between child and man. …
You can catch a woman dead to rights in a lie – like a child with cookie crumbs still stuck on the corner of her lips insisting she wasn’t in the cookie jar – it simply does not matter to them. They just create a new truth in their heads and carrying on as if nothing matters.
Women are: Children who need a time-out
Women are like children. They need clearly defined limits. They will test those limits continually, but they MUST know they are there, and that they are enforced.
Both children, and women, are happiest when there are clear limits and those limits are enforced.
A smart man will NEVER lower himself to child’s level, nor a woman’s.
Women are: Infants.
Some men in the men’s movement have accused feminist women of being children. This is inaccurate. They are one step behind children — they are still infants. … This grown-woman infant consciousness is so widespread that most of us don’t even comment on it any longer. We take it for granted that many women are going to act like infants. I suggest that it’s time for the men’s movement to address the fact that feminists are suffering from arrested development, that feminists are acting like infants. … It’s time that the men’s movement pointed out that infants are dependent, and must not be given positions of responsibility, such as a public office or a top management spot at a corporation. … Until women start acting like adults, until women are forced by our laws and customs to shoulder both responsibility and accountability like all other adults, they should have no right to even ask to be promoted to leadership positions.
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| Evil feminists oppressing a fake waterfall |
Follow this simple four-step plan!
1) Find a story in The Daily Mail, that bastion of journalistic excellence, about a dumb, irritating woman saying or doing something dumb and/or irritating.
Oh, here’s one, with the promising title “Why I’d rather my daughter marry a rich man than have a brilliant career.”
Representative dumb and irritating quote:
Younger women have realised that instead of spending the day listening to some bore drone on about sales figures, it might be more fun to go swimming with the children while the cleaner sorts out the house.
2) Decide that this dumb, irritating woman is somehow a “feminist,” even though she actually mocks feminists at one point and, oh yeah, her whole life plan for her daughter is pretty much the exact polar opposite of feminism.
3) Post the article to Men’s Rights on Reddit under the title “Marry a rich man: The new wave of feminism.”
4) Collect upvotes.
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The rape charges against Julian Assange have inspired a massive flareup of pure bushittery on the net, amongst Men’s Rights troglodytes and liberal bloggers alike, vilifying the accusers and dismissing their charges as politically motivated revenge schemes. The gist of it all: the charges are false, and it wasn’t even real rape, and the women charging him are evil feminist harpies and might be working for the CIA.
And, as Kate Harding points out in a Salon piece that is the best thing anyone has written about any of this so far, all this speculation is based on … a whole lot of nothing. We don’t know the specifics of the accusations, and much of what little we do know of the case comes second-hand from tabloids and other unreliable sources. One thing is clear: the few new details released today indicate that he’s being charged with real rape all right, so let’s move on from all the indignant and uninformed talk about “sex by surprise.” (Feministe has the only really intelligent discussion of the “surprise” issue I’ve seen.)
Harding sums it up:
The fact is, we just don’t know anything right now. Assange may be a rapist, or he may not. His accuser may be a spy or a liar or the heir to Valerie Solanas, or she might be a sexual assault victim who now also gets to enjoy having her name dragged through the mud, or all of the above. The charges against Assange may be retaliation for Cablegate or (cough) they may not.
Public evidence, as The Times noted, is scarce. So, it’s heartening to see that in the absence of same, my fellow liberal bloggers are so eager to abandon any pretense of healthy skepticism and rush to discredit an alleged rape victim based on some tabloid articles and a feverish post by someone who is perhaps not the most trustworthy source. Well done, friends! What a fantastic show of research, critical thinking and, as always, respect for women.
So let me make a radical proposal: Until we actually know shit about what really happened, let’s suspend our judgment about Assange’s guilt or innocence. Liberals want to support Assange because, you know, he’s fighting the power and shit. (Even Naomi Wolf has joined the pro-Assange chorus.) But the fact is, sometimes politically admirable people do bad shit to women. Men’s Rightsers want to vilify the accusers because the primary accuser is a feminist. But the fact that someone is a feminist doesn’t mean that she can’t get raped.
The low point of the Men’s Rights discussion of the case so far is probably this blog post by ScareCrow, who took a few moments from posting comments here to write up the strangest attack on the accusers yet. ScareCrow first demands that everyone assume that Assange is “innocent until proven guilty,” conveniently forgetting that those of us not actually serving on juries are entitled to come to whatever conclusions we want on criminal cases, for whatever reasons we want. (Heck, we’re allowed to disagree with jury verdicts: I have no problem calling OJ a murderer, even though he wasn’t convicted as one.)
Still, in this case, given that we have no real evidence to weigh, there’s no good reason to assume either guilt or innocence at this point.
It’s what ScareCrow does next that’s telling: after indignantly telling us not to assume Assange’s guilt, he spits forth an extended series of vicious “speculations” about the accusers, based on … what they look like in a couple of photos he’s seen of them. Of one accuser, he writes:
This woman reminds me of those women – to whom – everything is a simple “chess game”. Move and counter-move – guile and deceit. This type is what I like to call the “quiet” and “not so brainy” type. Smart when she was young perhaps, but upon hitting puberty, blamed her supposed “lack of attraction” on the fact that she was “no so brainy”. This lead to a contempt of men. I can see that in her face. A certain bitter frustration that her encounters with men did not proceed according to the “tea parties” she used to imagine as a small child – is what I see written on her face.
And of the other:
Ah yes. The look on this woman’s face is painful for me. Why? Simple – she looks like many women I have met – who consider themselves to be excessively attractive. Since they believe they are so attractive, they use that “feature” to hurt men. This type of woman was basically the “parasite” I encountered many times in my youth – at clubs, in college, and various other places where young men and women are supposed to “hook-up”. When being approached by a man, such women would usually respond with extreme callousness and uncalled for hostility and rudeness. Looking at her face, all I see is malice and hatred of men.
Yep, that’s right: she’s a dirty man-hating liar because … she reminds ScareCrow of women who turned him down turned down other dudes (who definitely weren’t him) when he was in college. Absurd, to be sure, but not, in the end, all that different from liberal bloggers and Men’s Rightsers who, in the absence of evidence, have projected their own issues onto the case.
Go read the Harding piece.
More on the case from Jezebel and Amanda Marcotte.
EDIT: A new piece on Feministe critiquing Naomi Wolf’s idiotic blog post on the case.
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| From Not an MRA |
I discovered an odd little manifesto the other day put forth by a raging antifeminist … who also hates the Men’s Rights Movement. “Not an MRA’s” site looks like a blog, but it’s essentially a long rambling rant cataloguing all the reasons “why I am NOT an MRA.” His basic thesis:
I hate feminism. I hate the destruction it has brought onto our society and culture. I hate male-bashing. I am sick and fed up with all of it. That said – I realize that the MRM – or MRA’s are doing way more harm than good in the efforts of getting rid of these things.
As the lead-in to a manifesto, it’s not quite up there with “a spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism,” but it certainly grabs your attention. As do the illustrations he uses to illustrate his various points, taken from Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland. (Don’t tell Disney!)
So what exactly does notanmra hate about the MRM? It’s a idiosyncratic list of irritations, some perfectly understandable, some just sort of cranky. Here’s a partial list:
He hates the endless blather about “manginas” and “White Knights,” and the slew of of oddball acronyms that litter most MRA discussions (PUA, MGTOW, MGHOW, NAWALT, and of course MRA). He thinks MRAs cheapen the notion of “male bashing” by complaining endlessly about ads in which men get kicked in the balls are the victims of slapstick violence. He hates the undercurrents of anti-Semitism and generalilzed bigotry that infect some MRA forums. He hates conspiracy theory in general. He hates the endless denunciations of “chivalry.”
Holding doors open for people is common courtesy. If you approach the door first, hold it open for the PERSON behind you. Where I work, men do this for men, men do this for women, women do this for men, and women do this for other women. It’s called being a human being. A few MRA blogs/sites label this as “chivalry” – poppycock. Come on out of that rabbit hole and stop acting like a screwball.
Holding doors open for PEOPLE is not what leads to male-hatred or male-bashing.
He hates that “some MRAs call themselves “”masculists” or “masculinists”. This makes me sick. I have no desire to “follow in the footsteps” of feminism by calling myself this, or even by associating with people who call themselves this.” He thinks all the talk of circumcision as “genital mutilation” is completely backwards, and that the procedure is actually beneficial. (I’m guessing of all his opinions this is the one that gets MRAs most angry at him.)
Of all his various complaints, I think my favorite is this one:
Observations have convinced me that the MRA agenda is not one of getting the laws changed or eliminating male-hatred, but rather – to argue the same points over and over.
Don’t I know it!
EDIT: I corrected a testicle-related error in the text above.
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| Paul Elam, in context. |
Yesterday, I posted a set of pretty awful comments from Paul Elam’s A Voice For Men blog, one of which included this lovely line:
I am so fucking tired of this shit, that I really wouldn’t mind shooting a bitch dead in the face.
While even the mildest critiques of MRA dogma tend to get downvoted into oblivion on Paul’s site — see this one, for example (you’ll need to click another link there to even see it) — the “shoot a bitch” comment got more upvotes than down. Which tells you something about Paul’s audience.
Paul has now taken the offending comment down, saying that he hadn’t noticed it before, because he was on vacation. I’ll take his word for this. His explanation for taking it down? “[T]he bottom line,” he writes, “is that I am vehemently against violence.”
Given that Paul has written several posts containing similarly over-the-top fantasies of violence against women, and another recent post mocking female rape victims, this explanation rather strains credulity.
His explanation for these previous posts? Again, back to his post today:
I have satirized violence several times, and it has of course been taken out of context and even drawn criticism from MRA’s and sympathizers. … If people don’t recognize satire or humor then let ’em stew.
So he’s making three claims about his previous posts containing fantasies of violence towards women: that they’re “satire,” that they’re “humor,” and that the violent quotes have been “taken out of context.”
So let’s deal with all of those claims in regard to Paul’s most notorious “satirical” post. I’ll start with humor.
Here is an example of humor, from comedian Emo Philips:
Always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said: “A truck!”
What’s funny about this — at least the first time you hear it — is that Philips has led us to believe one thing (that we’re going to hear some words of wisdom from his grandfather), but instead flips the script, challenging our expectations by delivering instead the last thing his grandfather shouted before being hit by a truck. (Sorry, explanations of humor are almost always completely unfunny.)
Here is an example of something that is not humor:
Let’s punch some bitches until blood spurts from their noses!
That second example might seem a bit strange. It’s not clever. There’s no twist, no challenging of our assumptions. There’s no incongruity. It’s really just a violent fantasy. Why would anyone claim that it’s “humor,” or satirical?
Well, that’s essentially what Paul Elam has been doing. That quote isn’t from him — I made it up as an example — but it’s essentially a condensed version of Paul’s allegedly “humorous” remarks about domestic violence:. Here’s Paul, in his own words, in a post I’ve criticized before:
In the name of equality and fairness, I am proclaiming October to be Bash a Violent Bitch Month.
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.
Ba-dump TSSH! Not even an instant rimshot makes that funny. There’s no clever twist; it’s just a fantasy about beating and humiliating women.
Is it unfair to quote this passage “out of context?” Here’s a bit more context: those words ran next to a photo of a woman with a black eye, with the caption: “Maybe she DID have it coming.” (See the picture at top right, which is a screenshot from Paul’s site.)
But I suspect that’s not the “context” Elam is talking about. He seems to be referring instead to this, from later in his post:
Now, am I serious about this?
No.
That seems clear. And in one sense this is true: he’s not literally calling for men to organize a “Bash a Violent Bitch Month.”
But let’s look at the comment I just quoted in context, shall we? (Emphasis added.)
Now, am I serious about this?
No. Not because it’s wrong. It’s not wrong. Every one should have the right to defend themselves. …
In that light, every one of those women at Jezebel and millions of others across the western world are as deserving of a righteous ass kicking as any human being can be. But it isn’t worth the time behind bars or the abuse of anger management training that men must endure if they are uppity enough to defend themselves from female attackers.
In other words, he’s not backing off from his advocacy of violence against “violent bitches” because he thinks that this violence is wrong; he’s backing off for purely pragmatic reasons — if you actually “bash a violent bitch” it may get you arrested.
Now, about the question of satire. Satire is defined as “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.” When Jonathan Swift wrote his famous essay seemingly calling for the Irish to eat their own children, it was satire because he was being bitterly ironic: he didn’t really think anyone should be eating babies, and his essay was in fact intended to mock British authorities and callous attitudes towards the Irish.
By contrast, there’s no irony in Paul’s post: he actually believes that “violent bitches” deserve “a righteous ass kicking,” and he states this quite explicitly.
Since Paul wrote that post, he’s written others that reveal a pretty callous view towards female victims of violence. In one post, which I discuss here, he mocks and blames women for the crime of getting raped, suggesting that women who get drunk and make out with guys are “freaking begging” to be raped, “[d]amn near demanding it”:
[T]here 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.
You can find those quotes, in all their glorious context here.
And in a more recent piece, Paul announces that he doesn’t really care all that much about rape:
I lack any desire to react to rape, especially as currently defined, with the same vengeful repugnance that I would other crimes generally considered heinous.
The fact is that I care about a lot of things more than I care about rape.
He goes on to suggest a curious moral equivalency between women and rapists, saying that he views “the perceived struggles of women with all the concern I have for the struggles of real rapists in the criminal justice system.”
Now, again, there is context here: in the rest of the piece he argues, not very effectively, that rape has been defined in crazy ways by the “hegemonic [feminist] elite,” that “so often nothing more than accusation is needed in order to secure a conviction.” And so on and so forth. You can read the whole thing here. Still, none of this “context” alters the noxious attitudes he’s shown towards women time and time again.
Paul, you’re a terrible comedian, and an even worse satirist. But as a human being?
You’re pretty fucking awful at that too.
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| Britney, don’t you know YOU’RE toxic? |
More, uh, questionable wisdom from angry dudes on the nature of women. Today: comments from A Voice For Men. I’ve highlighted some of the nastiest stuff for easy reference.
Women: Deserve to be shot in the face.
Women are the natural enemies of men. No matter what anyone says and how good women claim to be, that is just the truth. This will never stop and men will continue under the tyranny of women. … We are called rapists, abusers, bullies, and even homophobes because we don’t embrace the faggots biologically backward, queer-ass culture. … I am so fucking tired of this shit, that I really wouldn’t mind shooting a bitch dead in the face. … They are evil. ALL OF THEM!!! … This is a gender war, and women, ALL WOMEN! are the enemies, there is no compromising.
(Note: This comment, even with the whole shooting-women-in-the-face bit, got more upvotes than downvotes from A Voice For Men’s peanut gallery, and “redpill” was not taken to task for actually suggesting murder by the site’s owner, Paul Elam. Lots of other crazy stuff in that comment thread.)
EDITED TO ADD: Elam has now removed this comment, which he says he hadn’t seen before, saying “I am vehemently against violence.” Given that he has posted similarly violent fantasies several times in his own pieces, this is a little difficult to take altogether seriously. (My link is to the version of the page saved on the Internet Archive, which still contains the comment intact.) He claims those other pieces were “satire” and that the violent parts were “taken out of context.” Of course, none of this changes the fact that a comment about “shooting a bitch dead in the face” got more upvotes than downvotes on his site. (Here, by contrast, is a comment that got massive downvotes on his site; you’ll have to click a link there to even make the comment visible.) EDITED AGAIN TO ADD: In this post, I take apart Paul’s claim that he’s being satirical when he talks about violence.
Women are: Toxic, but their vaginas are useful.
Women are toxic – stay away from them, dont be around them for too long and most importantly when pumping them with man juice wear protection so you dont get infected with child support.
Until women regress back into their maternal/house keeping roles use them for the only thing they have to offer to a straight man – their vaginas.
Women are: Malleable, gullible, stupid, bad, irrational, and ridiculous.
In my opinion women are malleable,gullible and lack vision.The statements they make are ludicrous,they are therefore stupid, driven on by one thing and one thing only-their sexual power. The day someone creates a pill that desexualizes them in our eyes, then that is it. It is over. I don’t for a single second believe that the nature of women has transformed over the ages. Go back in time and the same nonsense will be as visible then as it is now. … women are this way by nature. The good thing is,they have demonstrated, to their everlasting detriment, just how bad, irrational, and ridiculous they really are. Time to stop pandering.
Women are: Crazy, undisciplined, irresponsible, toxic, entitled, and they’ll probably get your penis infected.
[W]omen in this country my age and younger are out of their minds! They have no concept of discipline or responsibility. They can talk with the best of them but their actions paint an entirely different picture. It’s not going to an extreme to want to get away from Western women entirely. They are toxic human beings. It is dangerous physically (many of them have STD’s), economically (look at hulk hogan’s ex and her new yacht the alimoney), religiously (these girls are some of the MOST entitled I have seen), etc.. Even the best of them slip into the entitled mentality far too frequently.
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Today in “Women Are …”: Horrible generalizations about women from The Spearhead. Spearhead readers have the option to upvote comments they like, and downvote those they don’t. The comments these quotes are taken from all got a lot of upvotes and only a tiny handful of downvotes, if any.
Women are: Dumb as bricks
For all their degrees, today’s women are dumb as bricks. They have rejected ‘weak’ feminine virtues in favor of masculine vices, imagining themselves to be empowered by them. … There has never been a more miserable generation of women, yet it seems they would rather have their misery a hundred times over than trade it for their natural, submissive role as wives and mothers under a patriarchal system.
(This comment got 68 upvotes, 2 downvotes)
Woman are: Good for Sex (Some of them.)
Some women are good for sex. That’s it. The rest deliver manipulation, financial devastation, false accusations and every form of betrayal with the government and every other lying bitch backing them up. NO THANKS!
(This comment got 38 upvotes, one downvote.)
Women are: A Parasite
Modern women are a parasite. They have no conception of the fact that to get, they should be willing to give. And woe betide the man who puts any trust in a woman. She will pull the rug out from under him simply for the power trip she gets.
(22 upvotes, one downvote.)
Women are: Spoiled beyond repair
Women are … purely ME focused animals, and they’re neither capable of logic nor feeling empathy for a man. … U.S. women are spoiled beyond repair.
(39 upvotes, 0 downvotes.)
Apparently, this is the sort of thing that gets you massive upvotes on The Spearhead. Duly noted.
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| What a fucking douchebag. |
Here are some of the things I have, er, “learned” about women from reading Men’s Rights/Men Going Their Own Way blogs and message boards.
This is part one in what will be, I suspect, a very lengthy series.
Women are: The missing link
All in all I am thoroughly convinced that women have all contempt for human life and are the missing link between apes and humans. This is a gender war, a GENDER WAR! and small innocent babies that are murdered and children that get abused are caught in the crossfires, and these females are utterly fucking useless and a waste of fucking breathing space. They have shown their true colors and we don’t need them anymore.
Women are: Nuclear waste
I have come to the conclusion that it’s not enough to avoid romantic relations with women. A man should take extra precautions to avoid even the most casual contact. Regard them as nuclear waste or a highly contagious disease.
Women are: In violation of the Geneva Convention
Women have no idea what they want, they need to be told and controlled. If you are too nice or become apathetic, you are fucking doomed. Either way, if you get married, you are doomed. Women are cunts, and they are absolute masters of mental torture and abuse. If we simply hired bitches to interrogate and torture all captured terrorists, the war on terror would be over in less than a year.
Women are: Unlovable humans
Men are lovable humans, unlike women. Men are the greatest ever treasure of gold, whom women worthless could never compare to or ever hold a candle to. … the male sex is ever superior to the weaker female one. Men in India are mistreated vis-à-vis females, to get the bitches feel dignified. This is against nature. … Men are taken advantage of by bitches (the woman race). … Woe betide women. I hate them too much, girls too.
NOTE: These comments do not reflect the opinions of all MRAs. But these sorts of things are posted constantly on MRA/MGTOW blogs and message boards, and are rarely challenged. Some, like the first comment here, may even receive multiple upvotes from other readers,
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Oh Reddit. Sometimes you make me so sad. Case in point: the 5,415 upvotes Redditors gave to this old dog of a story, a blatantly misogynist, and blatantly made-up, revenge-vasectomy tale from the “Best of Craigslist.” Mitigating factors: the fact that some commenters correctly labeled the story a hateful fake; the 4,582 downvotes the story got (resulting in “only” 833 net upvotes).
But sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. Even as I was contemplating the idiotic reaction to this idiotic vasectomy story, I ran across another headline: “Does homophobia affect straight males too?” Good question. Weirdly, the post was from the Men’s Rights subreddit. Hoping for the best but fearing the worst, I took a look. Lo and behold, the post had actually inspired a real, honest discussion of the issues.
The OP set the stage with a few specific questions:
Have you ever hesitated to become close to another male for fear that it might be misinterpreted by someone else? Was there ever a time you resisted getting close to another male emotionally because you were afraid it might be seen as sexual? Does the fear of being called gay or a faggot ever change the way you behave in front of other males?
Among the answers there were of course a few jokes, including one that was actually sort of funny:
dontputsaltinyoureye 9 points
it has had a tremendous effect on my life. i am unable to wear my avril lavigne [shirt] in public due to the fear. WHY CAN I NOT WEAR MY AVRIL LAVIGNE SHIRT?!
And there was the requisite reference to Glee:
AGenericGoon 44 points
I am heterosexual, and watch/enjoy glee.
I will take this secret to the grave.
But there were also a number of bracingly honest comments, comments that would not be out of place on a feminist or LGBT message board. Some commenters talked about being gay-bashed — even though they aren’t gay. Others talked about how hetero-normative gender roles force men to keep quiet about their feelings:
TheBananaKing 27 points
Absolutely. all -normative behaviours box people in.
Straight guy here. … there’s an awful lot of restriction and anxiety in inter-male behaviour. You can’t ever be sad or hurt – only angry. You can’t extend comfort or affection towards another guy, except via humorous taunting / rivalry / aggression (eg play-fighting), unless you’re very, very drunk. You have to do this kind of… reverse double-entendre the entire time, translating everything into John Wayne before you speak or act it, and back again to understand others. It’s a pain in the ass.
Others offered more personal takes on what it’s like to be a straight guy who’s frequently taken to be gay:
ecartes 9 points
I talk with a lisp and dress really well. I’m also heterosexual.
Almost everyone I initially meet believes, nay, KNOWS, that I’m, ACTUALLY homosexual. It’s weird, living with the thought that everyone I meet thinks I’m gay. Although I will never know fully the oppression that some gay people face, I feel like I’ve felt a lot of it just from being perceived as gay. …
And perhaps the most unexpected of all:
soylentcoleslaw 33 points
If I acted on my normal impulses, I’d be extremely effeminate. I love cute things and cute clothes, I have subconscious feminine mannerisms, and I’d love a strong partner who makes me feel safe and who would take charge. I’ve never had a gay fantasy in my life. The thought of being with another man just doesn’t do it for me, but given what I want and who I naturally am, I’m said on numerous occasions how much easier my love life would be if it did. As it is, if I want to attract someone new, I have to tamp all that down and put on my reasonably masculine face, and maybe if I’m lucky, I can reveal some of that side of myself gradually. But I can’t be totally myself. Never. … So I go on pretending to be manly sometimes and hopefully don’t screw up.
Oh, sure, there were some answers that were bluntly homophobic — redwood9 states plainly that “I just hate fags … I hate all cocksuckers and those who bend over and take it in the ass” — but they made up a tiny minority of the comments, and were generally downvoted.
So what’s going on here? Has the Men’s Rights Subreddit suddenly become a beacon of open-mindedness? Not exactly. Most of those commenting in the topic don’t appear to be Men’s Rights regulars, but Redditors who were drawn to the topic when it appeared on Reddit’s main page. Here’s what someone who is a MR regular had to say:
aetheralloy 0 points
“Bro’s” and “bromance” is the term often used to shame men … Women (feminists) in particular love to use it. …
The really interesting question here isn’t if it affects males, but why women are both extremely homophobic towards gay males while also willing to use them as emotional buddies.
Yeah, damn those feminist women and their hatred of gay men!
So, no group hug just yet. But it’s good to see an outburst of good sense in a discussion forum that’s often pretty backwards.
It’s just a pity that the moderator of Men’s Rights remains convinced “that there is an international, feminist, antimale conspiracy,” as he puts it in the sidebar, and that the subreddit’s slogan remains “Earning scorn from feminists since March 19, 2008.”
Because, you know what? If you’re a guy feeling boxed in by normative gender roles, some of the best people in the world to talk to about it are, you know, feminists.
