We Hunted The Mammoth
You may recall that post a couple of days back in which I talked about Dean Esmay of A Voice for Men — the alleged “Men’s Human Rights” site that hosts an open call to firebomb courthouses and police stations in its “activism” section — suggesting that unnamed Man Boobz “minions” might stoop to impersonating female MRAs in an attempt to make the Men’s Rights movement look bad.
Warren Farrell, as a sort of “elder statesman” of the Men’s Rights movement, may have gained a sort of weird respectability simply by being around as long as he has, and because he’s published books with major publishers. But the myth of Farrell’s intellectual respectability shatters pretty quickly once one takes a good, honest, and unbiased look at what he has actually written, in The Myth of Male Power and elsewhere.
We’ve already taken a look at some of the strange and troubling things he wrote about rape in that book. Farrell is also fond of rape as a metaphor, and regularly compares things that men endure to rape, as a way of bolstering his overall thesis that it is men, not women, who are the “disposable sex,” and who truly suffer.
NOTE: This is the second installment of The Myth of Warren Farrell, a continuing series examining Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power, the most influential book in the Men’s Rights canon. You can see the first post here.
Men’s Rights elder Warren Farrell has been accused of being a “rape apologist,” largely because of one now-notorious sentence he wrote in The Myth of Male Power:
We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting.
This sentence is at least as puzzling as it is disturbing. Calling date rape “exciting” is pretty foul. But what on earth is “date fraud?”
Our dear friends over at A Voice for Men, the thought-leaders of the Glorious New Men’s Human Rights of The 21st Century Human Rights Movement With Girl Writes What (GNMHROT21CHRMWGWW) have been trying to introduce a new word into the vernacular, as part of their broad-based campaign for the betterment of human rights. That word? Rapetard.
While the portmanteau word has been floating around for some time, with assorted definitions, it took on its modern, human-rightsy definition in mid-April in a little-seen YouTube video by a fellow calling himself “Dick Magnum,” who defined it thusly:
An individual who, for reasons related to intellectual, emotional or moral deficits, cannot distinguish between questioning [the idea of] “rape culture” and supporting rape.
It was picked up in an AVFM post titled “Beware the Rapetard Society” about a week after that. Soon other AFVM writers seemed to forget Mr. Magnum’s careful definition, adopting it as their go-to epithet for feminists they don’t like. Which is pretty much all of them.
In a post having nothing to do with rape or rape culture, Paul Elam talked about “dumbing things down so that even a rapetard could understand.” In the comments to that post, AVFM contributor Dan Perrins joked about “rapetarded quote mining expedition[s].” And in a post yesterday, AVFM’s “Andy Bob” attacked Australian comedian Catherine Deveny for an assortment of alleged offenses against decency — including using the term “retard” – in a post that referred to her as a “rapetard” four times, including once in the title.
You might think that combining the word “rape” with an ableist slur –“tard” – and applying it liberally to feminist women would be a step backwards in the campaign for human rights, but apparently that’s old-fashioned twentieth century thinking on my part.
No book has had more influence over the Men’s Rights movement than Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power. Published in 1993, in the heyday of the early 90s antifeminist backlash, it set the agenda for the Men’s Rights movement as it’s developed over the last two decades. He’s the one who came up with the notions of “male disposability” and the “death professions.” He’s the one who got MRAs fixated on the issue of draft registration.
Some words of wisdom from TheRedPill subreddit, a lovely little subdivision of Reddit devoted to a sort of mishmash of Men’s Rights and Pickup Artistry. It’s at least as ridiculous as the sum of its parts.
Today, another lesson in how to get yourself hundreds of upvotes on Reddit.
It’s really quite simple.
1) Go to the Ask Reddit subreddit. Find the post asking Redditors if they’ve ever “tried a crazy urban-dictionary sex move? (e.g. Alaskan Pipeline, Komodo Dragon, Donkey Punch, etc.) How did it turn out?”
2) Post a story about a hilarious little prank you (allegedly) pulled on a sex partner that instantly transformed consensual sex into violent rape.
3) Oh, and throw in a gratuitous racial slur while you’re at it.
4) Then whine about how your partner’s negative response to your (alleged) little rape prank gave you “blue balls” and complain that you might have to pay her damages for “emotional distress” in civil court (allegedly).
You might think that this might be a bit much even for the morally undeveloped manchildren (and occasional womanchildren) who populate Reddit. But guess what? The poster of the tale in question got literally hundreds more upvotes than downvotes for his whiny “confession.”
Here’s the screenshot to prove it. (I’ve partically obscured the racial slur; click on image to see full-sized version.)
There were, of course, those who reacted like normal human beings to Mr. Dick Pic’s story. (I’ve obscured the homophobic slur that made up the entirely of his reply.)
Mr. Dick Pic was so offended that anyone was offended by his shitty (alleged) behavior that he rage-quit the thread, deleting his comment and — living up to his name — leaving only a dick pic in its place.
Now, Mr. Dick Pic may just be trolling, and I really hope that’s all there is to his terrible story, but his ridiculously pissy behavior after he got called out makes me think that his story, or at least parts of it, may actually be true.
Just another day on Reddit, the internet’s largest and most influential asshat aggregator.
Thanks to an anonymous Reddit informant for the heads-up, and the screenshots.
Longtime antifeminist crusader Erin Pizzey recently did an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit. Here are some highlights — by which I mean lowlights — from her answers.
Blog posts by the New Misogynists I write about here often seem to be little more than combinations and recombinations of a relatively small number of very bad ideas. Today, let’s look at a blog post from a “conservative libertarian” and creepy Nice Guy ™ who identifies himself only as TIC, which combines a bit of “consent is hard” and “women only like bad boys” with some muddled notions from Evo Psych to conclude that women are such mysterious creatures that no one could possibly know what they really want — and so therefore it’s women who are the ones who are really responsible when they get raped.
Men! Worried that eveil feminists will destroy your life and your financial future because, apparently, they have that power and love to destroy men’s lives for fun?
Fear no more, because Reddit’s Men’s Rightsers have your back! Mods of Reddit’s RedPill subreddit have started something called the Feminist Victims Fund, which will enable brave freedom fighters to send what will inevitably be a tiny amount of money to that dude who got fired after Adria Richards complained about a sexist joke he made, even though it wasn’t Richards who fired him and indeed she’s said she hopes he gets hired back!
Make sure you donate now, because Reddit’s MRAs will soon grow bored with this bold initiative and it will be completely forgotten, much like the massive Sink Misandry protest in Washington DC last year which actually didn’t even happen, come to think of it.
Here’s the pitch:
Feminism has caused some serious changes to our culture, to our society, and to our lives. We focus on some that are affected more than others, and we give back.
Our goal is to encourage men to speak out, to be men, to not fear oppression and enjoy their freedom of speech. Unfortunately in today’s climate, being a man has become a financial liability. Say the wrong thing in the wrong place and you can find your entire life ruined. Destroyed.
Feminists have fought for equality, but now they’re out for our rights.
They’re destroying us financially. They’re trying to tear apart our families.
We’re saying that enough is enough. No longer should men fear masculinity. No longer should speaking up risk a man his job, career, or family.
It’s time to rise up against the tyranny. It’s time to tell men it’s ok to speak up. We’re here for you. This is the Feminist Victims Fund.
Did I mention that you can donate using BITCOIN? In case you were worried that this thing wasn’t Reddity enough.
As Buzzfeed notes, one of the “board members” of the new fund is pickup guru and predatory douchebag misogynist Roosh V. On his blog yesterday, Roosh happily celebrated the harassment and vilification of Adria Richards in a post with the lovely title “American Feminist Adria Richards Gets Gang Raped By The Internet.”
Speaking of rape, Roosh is also the author of a booklet titled Bang Iceland, in which he admits that, well, he’s kind of a rapist himself. Buzzfeed quotes this rather revealing passage from the book, in which Roosh recalls a “date” he had in Iceland:
While walking to my place, I realized how drunk she was. In America, having sex with her would have been rape, since she legally couldn’t give her consent. It didn’t help matters that I was relatively sober, but I can’t say I cared or even hesitated. I won’t rationalize my actions, but having sex is what I do.
What a humanitarian.
