Here are some things that Alex Jones, the bellicose conspiracy theorist behind Infowars and Prison Planet, actually believes:
Category: patriarchy
[UPDATE 2: Pogo now says his misogynistic posts were an “experiment.” For my take on this, see here.]
[UPDATE: Pogo has taken down several of the blog posts mentioned in this post. I have replaced the links to the vanished posts with links to archived versions.]
So you know that dude Pogo, who makes all those amazingly perky-yet-somehow-also-ethereal music/video mashups using snippets of old Disney movies and the like?
Turns out he’s a bit of a misogynistic dickbag.
Yep. On his Pogomix blog, Nick Bertke (his real name) has been posting a bunch of tiresome and achingly unoriginal rants about feminism and the alleged privileges of women that might as well have been cut and pasted from the Men’s Rights subreddit or A Voice for Men.
"My seed has too much dignity to be in the company of the rest of useless humanity" and other insights on marriage and sperm from Infowars.com
So while poking about the manosphere today I followed a link from an obscure Men’s Rights blog over to Alex Jones’ Infowars site — specifically to the comments on a news article about a study that claims internet porn is destroying marriage.
Jones, as you may know, is essentially the king of the world’s conspiracy theorists, so naturally I expected his commenters to be pretty unhinged. What I didn’t realize is that they would also all be Men’s Rights Activists.
Well, maybe they don’t all call themselves that, but they certainly think like MRAs; several even linked to a site for Men Going Their Own Way.
You may remember woman-hating white nationalist F. Roger Devlin as the guy who invented “hypergamy” – or at least the misogynistic cartoon version of the concept popular in Men’s Rights and other “red pill” subcultures.
Well, Devlin also has some thoughts on domestic violence, and they make even less sense.
One favorite tool in the misogynist’s toolkit is the old “if women want to be protected from violent men it proves they need patriarchy” argument. It’s a rather silly argument, but those making it tend to do so with enormous smugness, feeling that they’ve got the ultimate “gotcha” to use against feminists.
Cast in point: A post today on Roosh V’s reliably horrendous Return of Kings blog arguing that, as its title puts it, “#TakeDownJulienBlanc Shows Feminists Need The Patriarchy To Protect Them.” Never mind that the woman-led campaign against the abusive pickup artist seems to be doing pretty well already.
“Well feminists, I’ve been waiting for this a long time, and it’s finally come,” the ROK contributor who calls himself runsonmagic writes. “I’ve been waiting for the day you’d ask us to bring back patriarchy.”
Uh oh, fellas! It seems that the evil femmies are taking over another bastion of manhood: the NFL.
According to one Man Going His Own Way(very loudly) known as Cybro, who blogs at Rex Patriarch,
Another male space is being assimilated.
Making the players wear pink was the beginning of the end. It may have even started before that with the female sportscasters getting in front of the cameras while men were trying to watch football but the trend is now clear.
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. LADIES IN FRONT OF CAMERAS!
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If you hope to make it through the day without losing all hope in humanity, you may not wish to read the following thoughts on Ray and Janay Rice from our old friend from The Spearhead, W.F. Price.
I know people instinctively and reflexively sympathize with the victim of a brutal attack, but …
Yeah, I’m giving you all one more chance to back out of this right now, because we all know that nothing good is going to come after that “but.”
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While we’re on the subject of creepy dudes and their terrible opinions about vaginas, I feel I would be remiss not to mention the whole “penis home” thing.
What penis home thing, you ask? Well, you may have heard about the recent fall from grace (oy there’s a cliché) of evangelical megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll, under fire for being a tyrannical buttheaded bigot with terrible opinions about women and LGBT folks. With Driscoll also facing accusations of abusive behavior, financial hanky panky, and even plagiarism, his Washington-based Mars Hill evangelical empire has been forced to shut down some of its local franchises.
Ok, you say, that’s sort of interesting, but what does it have to do with penis homes? I specifically asked about penis homes.
All right, penis homes. Some years back, Driscoll outlined what he saw as the proper Christian roles for our penises and vaginas. In a post on an internet message board from 2001 that’s recently been brought to the attention of the wider world, he offered these thoughts on (cis) men and the proper homes for their penises:
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Of all the loopy manifestos that this whole #GamerGate fiasco has inspired, I think this loopy manifesto, posted several days ago to the Men’s Rights subreddit to a smattering of upvotes, is probably my favorite.
Take it away, trudatness:
Think about what really went down in gaming journalism – not on the micro level, but on the macro level.
The most left-wing journalism companies happily filled the gaming journalism void. Think about it…
The most virulent lavender menace feminist laced industry on the planet began covering an industry whose target audience was comprised of somewhat socially awkward young men.
Hey what could go wrong?
Answer: Everything.
Woah, hate to be a stickler for stuff that actually makes sense, but if you’re going to use a homophobic slur to describe your opponents, make sure you pick the correct homophobic slur. The phrase “lavender menace” originated as an insult aimed at lesbians in the feminist movement; the term was later reclaimed by lesbian feminists. Whether as as a slur or as an honorific, I’m pretty sure the term is not a terribly apt description of the dude-dominated world of video game journalism, as dudes cannot actually be lesbians.