While Reddit’s reluctant, long-overdue banning of subreddits devoted to sexualized pictures of children drew applause from many Redditors, there has, of course, been a considerable backlash from pedophiles, ephibophiles, and other assorted apologists. ShitRedditSays has already started covering this, and I’ll be doing some posts of my own.
So far the most appalling thing I’ve run across (thanks to ScrappyB for pointing it out in the comments here) comes from the BeatingWomen subreddit — which is, unfortunately, a real thing. Some people, you see, are suggesting that maybe Reddit shouldn’t be hosting a forum devoted to sharing images and videos of women being brutalized, so that Redditors can cackle over their victimization, make rape jokes, and whatever else they do there.
The idea that r/beatingwomen “might be next “ roused one racist, misogynist jailbait enthusiast to post this little manifesto.
He’s not trolling. If you look at his comment history you’ll see he’s completely sincere. (Actually, don’t look at his comment history. It’s horrifying. I’m not going to link to it.)
How seriously does Paul Elam, head cheese of A Voice for Men, take the issue of rape? So seriously that he has proudly declared that
Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.
It’s in bold in the original, too. Evidently, the best way to fight against false accusations is to let the guilty free.
Recently, Elam has started a whole campaign, complete with its own little acronym and everything, to encourage others to follow his lead. In one recent post, he even seems to be suggesting (in a wink-wink-nod-nod sort of way) that his followers should lie about their beliefs in order to get on juries, just so they can Fuck Their Shit Up and, as he put it in a one word comment advertising the post on Reddit, “nullify.”
Now, in his original post on rape, it seemed to be pretty clear that his ire was aroused specifically by the specter of evil women lying about being raped by men. As he put it, justifying his decision to acquit the guilty,
Women lie about being raped, judicial politicians make careers off of putting away sexual offenders, and a brainwashed public cheers it all on. That so many of the men caught up in this are innocent doesn’t stop the grinding wheels of all this injustice for even a moment.
But before we conclude that Elam’s stance on rape is simply misogynist, I point you to a new post that suggests that he takes the rape of men just as (not) seriously as he takes the rape of women – to the point that he thinks it’s hilarious to make jokes about raping men. Announcing a radio show devoted to further discussion of his surreal atheist post from earlier this week, he says this about one famously feminist atheist activist who is also a dude:
Hopefully, before we are done [with the radio show], MRA’s of differing views will find more common ground, and PZ Myers will be limping to the drug store for some KY Jelly.
I guess on AVfM, making a rape joke about about a man is just peachy, so long as the man in question is someone you don’t like.
Stay classy, Paul!
(Thanks to Xanthe for alerting me to Elam’s most recent post.)
At the risk of splitting the “misogynist dickbaggery in the atheist movement” discussion in two, I really need to mention the amazingly well-timed Reddit meltdown of TheAmazingAtheist. It’s already been covered pretty well by PZ Myers and by Jen McCreight of BlagHag but, what the heck, I’ll throw in my two cents as well.
TheAmazingAtheist, for those who don’t follow these things, is (or was?) a popular atheist podcaster well-known, and beloved by some, for being something of a misogynist dickbag. He’s been on a anti-feminist kick for the last couple of months, winning himself many plaudits on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, though even the MR regulars couldn’t help but notice that he’s a bit of an ass.
Well, now he’s pretty much revealed, with a series of horrendous comments on Reddit, what a complete and utter asshole he is. Let me put a second TRIGGER WARNING here (for violent talk about rape), on top of the default TRIGGER WARNING I put on all my blog posts.
The context : a discussion (which he started) about the propriety of one feminist Redditor calling themself ICumWhenIKillMen. I’m not going to defend that nickname, which obviously makes light of violence in an obnoxious way. But AmazingAthiest was apparently so troubled by this sort of language that he felt compelled to spew forth a succession of violent rape threats.
Let me draw your attention to some of the highlights. (Click here to see his whole comment history on Reddit, where he comments as terroja).
I’m tired of being treated like shit by you mean little cunts and then you using your rape as an excuse. Fuck you. I think we should give the guy who raped you a medal. I hope you fucking drown in rape semen, you ugly, mean-spirited cow. Actually, I don’t believe you were ever raped! What man would be tasteless enough to stick his dick into a human cesspool like you? Nice gif of a turd going into my mouth. Is that kind of like the way that rapists dick went in your pussy? Or did he use your asshole? Or was it both? Maybe you should think about it really hard for the next few hours. Relive it as much as possible. You know? Try to recall: was it my pussy or my ass?
He continued in this fashion for some time, mocking those who pointed out that rape threats can be triggering, and regularly referring to his opponents as “cunts.” (Each of the following paragraphs is from a separate comment of his; click the quotes to see the full comments in question in their original context.)
Yes, you read that right: he was saying this shit to a rape victim.
Eventually, theAmazingAtheist found himself stopped short by this scathing critique, from the Redditor called veerserif.
I now know that, apart from being misguided, intentionally ignorant, and quick to resort to pathetic excuses, you are also a purposefully hurtful person with no sense of empathy, and no sense of remorse. You’re not just unintentionally uninformed, you actively turn what you know against people who should be deserving of your sympathy.
I was mistaken before. I thought, maybe, just maybe, after the circlejerking and the giggling, I could try showing you the stuff you said I didn’t highlight. I could show you what feminism has done for men, or maybe tell you about the existence of sex-positive feminism.
But this… this is a whole new level.
Your reputation, in my eyes, has fallen so far that dragging it back up to “mild disgust” would require nothing short of a miracle. You pretend to care about other people, but you really don’t. You like to think that you’re a decent human being, but you fall so far short of that you’re practically on separate planes of existence.
Deliberately triggering a rape victim? Equating being called out on your bullshit to the trauma of rape?
You know what you deserve? You don’t deserve death. You don’t deserve rape. You don’t even deserve some cosmically mandated, hilarious schadenfreude which would not only be brilliant, but just.
What you deserve is for everyone to know this side of you. You deserve for anyone who thought you were a good person to know what you’ve just done. You deserve your fans’ adoration turning to hatred, you deserve the judging stares and looks that people will give you. You deserve to be reminded, every day, of what you do and what you’ve done. You deserve to remember every day that there are people who suffer more than you, that there are people who are stronger and smarter, braver, more principled and better than you, in every way, until the day you realise exactly how wrong your actions have been.
I don’t want to see bodily harm visited on you, because I don’t want to see bodily harm visited on anyone. What I do want is for you – and, for that matter, every shitposter I’ve ever seen – to learn that anonymity is not an excuse.
At this point, theAmazingAtheist backed off, offered a whiny, petulant non-apology apology for, as he put it, “SOME of the statements I made,” and wondered aloud why people were still so mad at him.
He went on to make, yep, a little video about his experience, and to offer a weird and unconvincing “rebuttal” to PZ Myers’ comments on his meltdown. See PZ Myers’ post for links to the video, as well as the rebuttal itself (which is effectively re-rebutted by Myers). See here and here for a transcript of the video.
One heartening sign in all this: the massive numbers of downvotes theAmazingAtheist got for his worst comments. I hope that a significant number of them were from actual Men’s Rights Redditors, and not only from people who came into the discussion from elsewhere on Reddit, but of course there is no way of knowing.
Will atheists and MRAs drop theAmazingAtheist like a hot rape-threatening potato? Or will they start rallying around him as some sort of heroic truth teller and rape threatener? Somehow I suspect there will be a bit of both.
MRAs, by and large, aren’t big fans of chivalry, and complain bitterly about the terrible injustices forced upon them by this archaic concept, like having to hold doors open for ladies from time to time.
But perhaps they are not considering the many fine benefits of chivalry. In the comments section of Alcuin’s pro-patriarchy blog, our traditionalist friend fschmidt recently set forth the case for chivalry in a way that even the dullest misogynist could appreciate:
In early western culture around the time of the Renaissance, chivalry meant that ladies should be honored and sluts should be raped. This is a totally sound concept and encourages good behavior on the part of women. You cannot expect women to behave if they are not rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad behavior.
Fschmidt’s opinion inspired a lively discussion. Caeser’s Ghost argued that fschmidt had gone a bit too far with the whole rape thing:
Women who dress and behave like whores shouldn’t be raped. They should be prostitutes and treated as such.
Fschmidt replied:
Caesar’s Ghost, I have the greatest respect for prostitutes. Prostitutes provide a valuable service. But sluts provide no value and undermine morality. This is why sluts, identified as provocatively dressed women outside of areas of prostitution, were regularly raped around the time of the Renaissance.
CG argued that prostitutes deserve only the most limited sort of respect:
I respect prostitutes in so far as they fulfill a lowly but necessary function in society. Outside of that function, I have no respect or value for them.
Promiscuous women who are not prostitutes should be treated badly, but I don’t believe that they should be raped. I regard the Renaissance as a great era, but I would have to disagree with their way of handling the problem of sluts.
The mission of Alcuin’s site is, as he states at the top of every page, is to “Promot[e] the Intellectual Renaissance of the Western Tradition.” Apparently you can’t have a real renaissance without sorting out whether or not sexually active women should be raped, or just treated like shit.
Here’s a little one-question quiz to see how much you know about Reddit’s Atheism subreddit.
QUESTION ONE: A woman describes being raped by a “friend” while both were intoxicated (though she doesn’t call it rape). Do the r/atheism regulars:
a) Respond with sympathy and support
b) Attack her and furiously downvote her posts, with the assistance of one of the moderators of r/mensrights, then return to posting and upvoting rape jokes
BONUS QUESTION: True or False: Someone on r/menrights links to her comment as “an example of how and why many people believe that rape is everywhere… because their definition of rape includes every sexual misadventure.” The most heavily upvoted comment in the r/mensrights thread declares that the woman who was raped “sounds like a delusional sheltered teen.”
Yes, the correct answers here are the ones you assumed were correct.
Amazingly, despite all the jokes and the victim blaming/attacking going on, the thread also contains some highly upvoted comments lamenting the tendency of people to blame the victim in rape cases. Apparently, when a rape victim is drunk, it’s not rape, even when she repeatedly says “no” and gives in because she’s scared, so it’s fine to attack away, and even to accuse the victim of being a rapist too.
This enables Reddit Atheists not only to blame the victim of rape without feeling guilty, or admitting that this is what they’re doing, while simultaneously feeling self-righteous in their condemnation of religious people doing the exact same thing.
And because their rape jokes are also couched as jokes about religious people’s views on rape, they can feel self-righteous while making them too.
Sometimes the actions of Reddit Atheists cause me to begin to doubt just a teensy weensey bit that “atheists are a community that’s pre-selected for clear thinking and empiricism,” as one commenter in r/mensrights put it not that long ago.
"I cannot fucking believe I'm reading this on The Spearhead." "I know, right?"
You know what they say about stopped clocks – they’re right twice a day. The same is true with MRAs, though it happens a bit less frequently. Consider a Spearhead guest post from a while back titled Caveat Amator: Strategies for Men Before, During and After False Allegations, recently brought to my attention by Manboobzer extraordinaire Ami Angelwings, whose Escher Girls blog you should totally go look at.
The post, by Ken Kupstis, is mostly a bunch of standard-issue MRA hysteria about false allegations and evil false alleging ladies, complete with a bunch of possibly dubious legal advice.
But mixed in with the paranoia there’s some advice that is actually quite sensible and that, if followed, will not so much help men avoid false rape accusations as help keep them from raping women.
In the section of the post dealing with that supremely fraught all-caps moment BEFORE HAVING SEX WITH A WOMAN, Kupstis recommends that men stop and ask themselves a few questions:
Is she SOBER? Very inebriated women may claim to want or even demand sex, but it may be wise to see if “that was the alcohol talking”.
Good advice! Fact is, seriously inebriated people cannot consent to sex! If you have sex with someone who’s wasted (or unconscious), that is actually rape, and you may well find yourself the target of a real rape accusastion – nothing false about it.
Has she verbally consented to sex? It is better to ask “Do you want to make love?” and receive a positive response then to merely assume she’s consenting to sex via body language.
Also good! Consent should be crystal clear. People who actually do want to have sex with you will not be offended if you ask to make sure! If you’re worried that someone will say no if you ask them directly, you should not be having sex with that person! If you ask and they do say no, respect that no. If your idea of “seduction” means pawing at and pressuring a woman until she gives in, you’re not a master of seduction. You’re a rapist.
Does she display or claim enthusiasm for BDSM (bondage and sadomasochism) activities? As exciting as it may seem, do not permit a barely-known woman to handcuff you to anything (that you can’t break loose from on your own)!
Also good advice! Don’t let someone you barely know anything about put you in handcuffs! (No ethical BDSMer will try to pressure you into anything like this.) Here’s the thing: Because of the inherent dangers of bondage and whipping and other such activities, BDSM has the potential to go very, very wrong very, very fast. BDSMers know this.
Does she claim to ‘like it rough’? Even if so, that claim does not obligate you to play rough. No matter how insistent she may be, you should not bruise or break the skin.
Also good advice. You are not obliged to “play rough” with a partner if you don’t want to. (That’s how sexual consent works: everyone has veto power, at any point in time.) And you shouldn’t leave bruises, not with a first time partner and not unless you know they’re ok with that. Plenty of BDSM submissives don’t mind, and in some cases actually like bruises. But you need to ask first. See my comments about BDSM above.
During foreplay, or before or during coitus, does she ‘tense up’, act frightened or apprehensive? Does she cry? If so, she may have been previously raped or molested. Her sex drive still exists, but she may psychologically equate sex with pain, servitude or dishonor.
If a woman “tenses up,” seems scared, or otherwise freaks out during sex, STOP IMMEDIATELY. Aside from the reasons already listed, there are any number of other things that might cause someone to react like this. For example, you could be raping her. (Did you remember that bit above about getting clear consent?) Or, even if she did consent at first, she may have changed her mind (consent is an ongoing thing, and anyone can remove consent at any point for any reason). Or you may be hurting her. The list goes on.
Whatever the reason, STOP AT ONCE, comfort her (don’t confront her), and try to figure out what is going on. (This all applies regardless of gender and/or sexual oriantation.)
Other advice in the Spearhead piece doesn’t really bear on the rape issue, but is simple common sense:
Are you using Birth Control? Note that while she may claim to be using birth control, it does not automatically mean that she is…she may normally be on birth control but has forgotten to take it, or is experiencing a false period, or is using a form of birth control with a lower rate of effectiveness. Most of these factors have not legally excused men for having to pay child support, although they should.
Using birth control is good! If you are having sex with someone you don’t know well, you should use a condom, no matter what birth control they are using (or say that they are using).
Do you know her FULL NAME? (Thousands of men have only needed to hear “Hi, I’m Bambi”, and it’s good enough for them.)
Another good question to ask yourself! (Though admittedly some of us have probably broken this rule once or twice.) Knowing a bit about your sexual partner is always good!
Also, if she’s named Bambi, ask her if she’s an entomologist, because entomologists are cool.
My favorite Spearhead comment for this article comes from intp:
Geez. After reading this article I’d rather play catch with a beaker of nitroglycerine than get near a woman.
How about this? Until all the Communists, corrupting our institutions in the West, have been identified and expelled or executed just avoid women in the West.
Treat Western Women like the malignant cancer they have become.
Intp, I FULLY SUPPORT THIS STRATEGY FOR YOU. At least the part about you avoiding women (not so much the executions thing). Stay far, far away from women. And the rest of us, too, while you’re at it.
Oh, and in case anyone is keeping score, intp’s comment (including the murder) got two dozen upvotes and no downvotes from the Spearhead crowd.
Click on the pic to see it in its full-sized glory!
So I linked the other day to Kate Beaton’s awesome comic about the obstreperous velocipedrix (inspired by the cartoon I used to illustrate this post). But since then I’ve had bicycle-riding-ladies on the brain and I thought it was worth another post. Besides, it gives me an excuse to use the cartoon above, which Beaton linked to in her Hark, A Vagrant post.
The notion that bicycle- (or velocipede-) riding women are inherently hilarious (or inherently evil) may seem a tad quaint now, but back in the late 19thcentury, when bicycling really took off, these cartoons were every-fucking-where.
The independent mobility of cyclists raised genuine alarm for their physical, if not moral, safety; simply put, the bicycle could easily take women to unsavoury places where they might be endangered physically (for example, by being attacked), or morally (for example, by being seduced into imprudent conduct with intemperate company). . . . Drawing on previous knowledge of the kinds of women who deliberately made themselves conspicuous in public, that is, prostitutes, there would be a strong tendency to conclude that cycling women were far from respectable: not exactly prostitutes, perhaps, but possibly women of loose morals or with an undeveloped sense of propriety.
What actions? Going outside dressed in something more revealing than a nun’s habit. Going outside at night. Not reacting with gratitude when dudes patronizingly lecture them on the perils of being a woman in public. It’s the same old shit: the “independent mobility” of women is pissing off a lot of men even today.
That’s why so many MRAs got so angry about the case of Lara Logan, the CBS news correspondent who was sexually assaulted while covering the protests in Egypt last year — many in the MRA camp weren’t so much angry at those who assaulted Logan as they were at Logan herself, for daring to cover political unrest in another country … while being a woman.
That’s why it always strikes me as a little odd that MRAs routinely describe their movement, such as it is, as a new one. It’s not. Theirs is a reactive movement, and a reactionary one – and not just because some of them literally think women should be denied the right to vote. It’s because so much of what they obsess about is the same old shit that pops up whenever women have stepped up and challenged their traditional roles.
Of course, these guys aren’t simply angry at women doing traditionally masculine things – from going where they like, on bikes or foot, to covering world politics. They’re worried that newly “masculinized” women will turn men into a bunch of emasculated pussies.
While poking around to find more cartoons to illustrate this post with, I happened across several that show just how persistent this worry is. Take a look. The first couple are from the turn-of-the-twentieth century; the third is from the 1970s. Notice a theme here?
This same old theme is handled a bit more subtly today, as this bit of clip art shows. Note the pink apron, in case you didn’t get the point: a man washing dishes is an emasculated wussy.
Of course, in the Manosphere, things are not quite so subtle. It’s telling that amongst MRAs and other modern misogynists the insult of choice for feminist men is “mangina.”
Here’s how one little manifesto defines the term. (I’ve edited out a lot; it’s pretty fucking repetitive, though students of misogynist psychology may wish to read the whole thing here.)
Manginas are pseudo-men who fixate their lives on getting a sniff of the female genitalia (figure of speech) at the expensive of others and by betraying real men.
Manginas see women as an ultimate being, places them on a huge pedestal, mind focuses only on sex or the satisfaction of women all the while not giving two bits a damn about his fellow man. …
A mangina is not a man, and we wouldn’t dare honor them by gracing them with the title. …
A Mangina seeks continuous approval from females thereby becoming their servant.
Manginas support women’s issues which are against his fellow men. Someone who espouses feminism but is really being suckered into a form of chivalry in which women’s interests take precedence over men’s. Unaware that they are merely “useful idiots”, doing what women want in the vain/hope of getting laid. When his usefulness is over she tosses him out with the rest of the rubbish. …
A Mangina is a self-depreciating man who subconsciously hates himself and blindly believes women are superior to him. He has been raised to think masculinity is inherently wrong – perhaps even a genetic/evolutionary/social flaw – and must be corrected by embracing his “feminine side” to the point of losing the very qualities that make him male.
Women acting like men; men acting like women. These were the bugbears of the velocipedrix-hating, women’s-suffrage-opposing assholes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; they were the bugbears of the protoypical woman’s-lib-hating chauvinist pigs of the seventies; and they remain the bugbears of an astonishingly large number of those in the Men’s Rights movement today.
And that’s why it, too, will end as a joke, remembered as a quaint holdover from earlier times rather than the progressive civil rights movement it sometimes pretends to be.
In the meantime: Kate Beaton, fucking hilarious, right?
NOTE: I found a whole bunch of awesomely retrograde cartoons from bygone days while looking for the illustrations for this post. I’ll be posting some of my favorites soon.
Nope! As the totally scientific chart above shows, it also contains: generalized misogyny, racism, atheist dickbaggery, and last but not least: lots of pics hosted on imgur!
Here, some recent data, most of which I have borrowed from ShitRedditSays. I’ve put the number of upvotes for each post in brackets, when relevant.
He’s been shamed into deleting it by you. Are you happy now? For the record, mattperrin said “Why does she have to be 18? So she can be in porn? Very very few girls enter porn, and if you’re just talking about being sexually aroused by her, that’s okay for anyone 13+”.
Reddit Makes Me Hate Atheists, by Rebecca Watson. As you’ll notice, her examples from r/atheism contain many massively upvoted rape and pedophilia jokes, not to mention lots more generalized misogynistic douchebaggery. The circle is complete!
But generally speaking you can pick almost any random highly upvoted post here for endless more examples of what makes even atheist activists hate Reddit atheists.
Then again, random pics of cute dogs and squirrel-riding frogs are certainly preferable to more angry racist rapey hatey pedo-justifying crap. So, yay imgur, I guess? (At least when it’s not being used to post still more angry racist rapey hatey pedo-justifying crap.)
Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown fame has a great piece up at In These Times on the ways in which the Internet has helped to highlight virulent and violent misogyny — and inspire effective feminist pushback. It’s actually kind of … inspiring? (That’s a word I don’t use often!) Here’s the opening:
When a history of 21st-century feminist activism is someday written, 2011 may be labeled Year Rape Broke. Sexual assault and harassment have, of course, always been key feminist concerns. But in 2011, sexual violence, exploitation, or intimidation were part of nearly every major story that fell under the heading of “women’s issues”–and the activism against it has been particularly widespread, focused and effective.
As we enter this renaissance of sexual assault awareness, it’s worth considering the ways in which new media has informed it–and, indeed, perhaps even made it possible. …
If you wonder why some dudes get so worked up about “false rape accusations,” it may be because their notion of “seduction” is pretty much indistinguishable from what most of us would call “date rape.” And chances are good that they sort of know this.
The original poster writes in with a heartrending tale: it seems he can’t get the ladies to touch his penis. Throw5891away writes:
So I have little problem getting numbers, little trouble turning those numbers into dates, I can keep her interested during dates, but i can’t make the move to anything physical beyond a kiss or some light making out.
Let’s have the deets!
A lot of my problem, I think, comes from the fear of possibly making it awkward. I’ve been in a few situations where i’ve tried to slide a hand down the pants of a girl and she turns timid. This is after some over-clothes touching, or pressure with my thigh. Warming them up, i think, is not the major problem. Obviously if a girl says no, i’m not going to push through with it because that’s when it gets awkward.
Yes, trying to stick your fingers in a woman’s vagina when she doesn’t want you to does tend to get a little … awkward.
Beyond me failing at making a first move, it’s nearly impossible for me to get a girl to notice I have an erection and attempt to do something about it.
Maybe you need to wear a t-shirt that says “erection” on it with a big arrow pointing to your crotch? Otherwise how on earth are the ladies you’re making out with ever going to realize you have a boner?
I’m average in size there, so them not noticing is not an issue. I feel like I almost have to physically take their hand and place it on my junk in order to make it happen. And after a while of them paying no attention to my erection (mind you, they’re still gropey elsewhere/into making out), it really starts to make wonder if they’re really into having sex with me at all.
It seems you might just be onto something here. And how on earth can you possibly tell if a woman actually, for real, wants to have sex with you? It’s not like you can ask her directly, because she has the power of speech, or anything like that.
Instead, you’d better ask the dudes on r/seduction. So let’s just see what they have to say.
PuaCurveBall suggests that the best way to avoid the “awkwardness” spoken of earlier is just to ignore it:
I hope this advice doesn’t sounds rapey, but you need to keep going until they seriously tell you no.
Pro-tip: Any bit of advice that starts off with “I hope this advice doesn’t sound rapey” is advice you SHOULD NOT FOLLOW.
Them not telling you firmly to stop (more than just “we shouldn’t be doing this” or “it is too soon”) is the signal. Escalate until they tell you to stop.
Yes, because “we shouldn’t be doing this” is such an ambiguous statement. It could mean anything! It probably is just girl-code for “we should be doing this, so please grab my hand and put it on your dick.”
Either you should get a firm “no, seriously get your hands off me, I’m not ready yet” or you should be having sex with these girls. Everything in the middle is working against you.
So long as she doesn’t literally mace you, you can assume she actually wants you to keep going.
Naturally, the suave Lotherios of the r/seduction community rewarded this sensible advice with upvotes.
Women want a man to be dominate. Other women lead you to believe you have to ask for permission, don’t listen to these stupid feminists. Go be a man, if she says no, you say ok, and keep doing exactly what you were doing. You get an erection, make it freaking known!!!
