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Dudes: silent no more!

This tiny kitten actually has nothing to do with the post.

Did Tom Matlack of the Good Men Project – not to be confused with Ben Matlock, fictional defense lawyer beloved by the elderly – swallow one of those mysterious “red pills” I keep hearing about on Men’s Rights blogs? Whatever he swallowed, it’s apparently causing him to hallucinate.

How else to explain his recent post on the GMP site titled “Being a Dude Is a Good Thing.” Now, as a dude who spends a good deal of time every day being a dude, I’ve got nothing against anyone being a dude, provided that’s what they want to be. It’s just that the piece itself is full of some rather strange generalizations that don’t actually seem to be, you know, true, at least not in what’s commonly known as “the real world.”

Rather than try to rebut his argument, because he doesn’t seem to have much of one, let’s just look at some of his loopier pronouncements:

Why do men get blamed for everything?

Uh, because they don’t? Sure, men get blamed for things, but guess what? Women get blamed for things all the time, too, from witchcraft, to divorce, to getting themselves raped, battered or killed. They’ve been blamed for earthquakes, for “inciting” male lust, for killing chivalry and “killing off real men,” for “taking roles intended by God only for men.” Heck, some inventive sorts have even figured out how to blame women for men who are assholes. And this guy has decided that “Black Women are to blame for the disrespect Black Men show towards Black Women.” For endless additional examples, scroll back through the posts and comments here, visit any of the blogs on my “boob roll,” or simply continue living on planet earth.

Back to Matlack, whose generalizations get more surreal by the sentence:

In the locker room, in the bathroom, on the walk out of the board room, in my conversations with men of all kinds, that’s what I hear more than anything. The resignation that to be a man is to be unacceptable at some level to the woman in your life.

Really? Who on earth are you hanging out with? And what women are they hanging out with? Are men other than Tom Matlack and his possibly apocryphal conversational partners actually having conversations like this on a regular basis? If the “woman in your life” basically hates men, what is she doing with you, and what are you doing with her?

One close friend jokes, “When speaking to my wife I always make sure to look at the ground in deference. And I make sure not to make any sudden movements.”

Um, what?

I’ve watched him. He loves his wife.

He’s a very competent human being. But with her he’s decided the only way to survive is to submit. The female view is the right view. The male view just gets you into trouble.

You see what I meant before about the hallucinations, right?

But Matlack suggests there is hope for the poor demure, never-before-heard-from men of the world. Apparently they are starting to open their mouths at last.

It seems that the blame game in the mainstream, whether through the minimization of male life in pop culture or on television or through the continued obsession with men behaving badly, has finally struck a chord with the average guy.

Let’s just pause a moment to reflect on this whole “minimization of male life in pop culture or on television.” Mr. Matlack, do you actually watch movies or television, or visit libraries or anything like that? Most movies revolve around men as the main characters, with women in many cases serving as little more than a love interest or simply as scenery. Have you ever heard of the Bechdel test? Read up on it, run the test on some of your favorite films, and then get back to us on the “minimization of male life in pop culture.”

Now back to Matlack’s manifesto:

We are no longer willing to be blamed for being men. We are no longer willing to avert our gazes and stay silent about our feelings. We are raising our voices and telling our stories in our own male vocabulary.

Yeah, because men have been so utterly silent about their feelings, their opinons, and pretty much everything, up until now.

To women, I assume the response is, “well, it’s about time.” But just remember when we talk it’s not going to sound like a women in a man’s body. It’s gonna be all dude. And you are just going to have to deal with that.

Ladies, prepare yourselves for a lot more Dudesplaining in the near future.  Dudes will be ignored no longer! Dudes!!! DUUUUUDESSS!!!!!!

EDITED TO ADD: Matlack’s gotten some responses on Twitter to his dudely roar; he’s posted a bunch of them here. Guest appearances by Amanda Marcotte and (seriously) Roseanne Barr.

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The False Rape Society is shocked — shocked! — by a fraternity’s “who would you rape?” survey.

The False Rape Society is shocked and stunned that frat boys would joke about rape.

So you may have seen the story yesterday about the University of Vermont fraternity that was suspended for sending out a charming little survey that allegedly asked, among other things, “If you could rape someone, who would it be?” (FWIW, the frat now says it was the work of an individual frat member, not the chapter.)

Reading about this incident, I’m guessing that you probably didn’t ask yourself: “I wonder how the guys at the False Rape Society will use this news to push their own agenda?” Heck, I didn’t even think to ask myself that question. But while doing the rounds of the MRA blogs I’ve discovered the answer to that question, and here it is: FRS head honcho Pierce Harlan described the survey as “perhaps a poke at feminism’s fascination with rape,” then denounced it as “indefensible,” then ranted about the evils of false rape accusations. I guess that isn’t really shocking at all.

First, Harlan offered this take on the “who would you rape” question:

I assume the survey was sick humor, a crude satire of the fratboy culture, and perhaps a poke at feminism’s fascination with rape.

Yes, because any time men make rape jokes it’s probably because, you know, feminism, and its wacky obsession with rape.

Then Harlan went on to suggest that rape was no laughing matter – especially when it comes to rape that doesn’t happen:

Whatever it was intended to be, ultimately it is indefensible, because trivializing the word “rape” is no laughing matter, whether it’s a joke about the rape of male prisoners, or the fantasy “rape” of women, or a false rape claim intended to get a guy in, or a woman out of, trouble.

Well, that was quick. Let’s not talk about the trivialization of real rape. Let’s talk about the epidemic of “false rape accusations” that Harlan has convinced himself is the real problem here.

With nary a pause, Harlan moved on to complain about hypothetical feminists making a big deal out of this survey instead of joining him on his crusade:

There most certainly will be an outcry in the feminist blogosphere over this isolated incident

This what incident?

and it will be cited as proof positive to support the myth that ours is a  “rape culture.”

Yeah, I wonder why casual jokes about rape would possibly be considered as part of “rape culture.”

A “rape culture,” of course, not only would tolerate but would condone such a puerile survey.  Our society does neither. The only “rape” jokes our society condones concerns prison rape — and that’s because society actually encourages prison rape as a sort of “added bonus” punishment for any hapless male who lands in prison.  It is ironic that actual prison rape does not garner the outrage that this this sick fratboy humor is generating. Go figure.

This from a guy who doesn’t seem to have ever even bothered to mention the leading anti-prison rape organization, Just Detention, on his web site. (See here for more on the issue on Man Boobz.) Though he does offer three links on his main page to information about the statute of limitation for rape charges, in case anyone reading is worried about getting caught being falsely accused for something they did didn’t do a long time ago.

Meanwhile,rape jokes — and not just prison rape jokes — are everywhere. Harlan, I assume you are at least somewhat familiar with a little site called Reddit, where people not only laugh at rape jokes – they laugh at actual rape!

Meanwhile, in the comments on Harlan’s article, some False Rape Society readers don’t even bother to pretend that the “rape survey” bothers them. According to the commenter called “bad,”

We should be celebrating young men who stand up against misandry. We should be celebrating the frat that said “no means yes” and we should be celebrating the frat that created this survey, if it’s a real story.

An anonymous commenter takes it a step further:

I do not condemn this action,

in fact, I wish I’d thought of it.

It is a brilliant and very appropriate response to the way young men are being treated by college campuses.

When the answer to “who would you like to treat like a rapist” is “all college men”, I think that asking them who they’d like to rape is more than fair.

But it is Harlan’s response to these comments that is the most revealing:

By the way, I read the reaction of Bad and others as a natural backlash … against the unconscionable PC culture of misandry on campus. I happen to disagree with those who suggest this was acceptable, but their remarks should not be construed as evidence that we live in a “rape culture.” Like Steve, I read their comments more as an affirmation that we live in a false rape culture–a culture that more and more men are finding intolerable.

I, on the other hand, doubt that these young men have the first clue about misandry, feminism, or how colleges run roughshod over the rights of young men. I am always amazed when we hear from falsely accused people who “had not idea this goes on.” My guess is they were just being being “funny.” I would, frankly, love to find out I am wrong, and that not only would they never call for a woman to be actually raped, but that this was a protest against the pendulum swinging too far. In that case, I am still not sure I could find it acceptable but it would initiate an entirely different dialogue.

So the survey is “indefensible,” yet a totally understandable reaction to, and protest against, an “unconscionable PC culture of misandry.”

Got it.

EDITED TO ADD: Harlan has written a response, of sorts, to this post. It is a bit — what’s the word I’m looking for here? — zany.

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Rapists, lad mags, and the Men’s Rights subreddit

Lad mags: Always covering the most important stories

What’s the difference between a lad mag and a rapist? Aside from one being a magazine and the other a person, albeit an reprehensible one, apparently not very much.

In a study soon to be published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers at Middlesex University and the University of Surrey showed people quotes about women from British lad mags (FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo) and from convicted rapists. Most survey respondents – men and women both – could not tell the difference between the quotes from the magazines and the quotes from the rapists. And most of the male respondents identified more with the quotes from the rapists than from the lad mags.

Here are some of the quotes the survey respondents were asked to react to. (You can find more at Jezebel.) Can you tell which of these are from rapists or lad mags?

Mascara running down the cheeks means they’ve just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out.

You’ll find most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and they’ll do it willingly.

Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it?

I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.

In case you’re wondering, the correct answers are: Lad mag, Rapist, Rapist, Lad Mag.

Creepy, eh?

Lead researcher Miranda Horvath of Middlesex University explains why she feels this is so troubling:

Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on, or want sex even when they say no, and there is clearly something wrong when people feel the sort of language used in a lads’ mag could have come from a convicted rapist.

I would say so.

And so, you might wonder, how did the regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit react this this research? Take a look.

The comment with the most upvotes offered some nice juicy denial:

The comment with the second-highest number of upvotes completely missed the point:

And then there was this hot mess:

In case anyone is wondering, that quote from French is actually a quote from a character in one of her novels. And it’s pretty easy to distinguish it from things posted on Jezebel, because none of the writers on Jezebel ever say anything even remotely like that.

The Men’s Rights subreddit, responding to evidence of rape culture by going “la la la I can’t hear you” since March 2008.

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Rape, mansplained at last. Thanks, anonymous dude on Reddit!

On Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, Detective_Mills cuts through the complexities of the rape debate with this bit of wisdom, putting all those rape complaints from women in their proper perspective.

 

 

Sorry, did I say “women?” I meant “cuntbags.”

NOTE:

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“And what if they get killed?” A Voice for Men as an antifeminist Witchfinder General

So John the Other has responded to my post about A Voice for Men’s “bounty” on the makers of the SCUM video. It’s a fairly unhinged rant, even by his standards. Here’s the money quote:

It’s a bizarre bit of circular logic: if some deranged asshole literally kills one or more of the videomakers, this is proof that the Swedish justice system isn’t working, which therefore justifies the deranged asshole’s actions. So the existence of vigilante violence justifies vigilante violence that justifies vigilante violence.

Since when is making a video a capital crime?

After all this, John rather bizarrely claims that “[u]nlike David Futrelle, I do not and will not lend myself to the support of violence, or indeed, of murder.”

That’s because, according to his daft logic, shooting  the videomakers would count as “self defense,” because evidently someone posting a video on YouTube that you don’t like is equivalent to someone coming at you with a knife.

While challenging AVfM’s “bounty” — without actually defending the video in any way — apparently means that I support murder. Go figure.

Vincent Price as the Witchfinder General

But dwelling too much on the specifics of this one case is to miss the larger point. A Voice for Men has essentially set itself up as a sort of antifeminist Witchfinder General. In the 1968 cult film of that name, you may remember, the corrupt Witchfinder tested whether the accused were witches by lowering them into water; those who floated were judged guilty, and burned at the stake. Those who sank were innocent, but dead.

Paul Elam and his sidekick John have a similar approach. They intend to do feminists harm, to “fuck their shit up,” regardless of what they’ve done or said. None of those who have been placed in the Register-Her “registry” as “bigots” deserve to be smeared or harassed (or put on the phony “registry” in the first place). But if you look at what they are ostensibly there for, well, you’ll discover that it matters not at all to Elam whether they sink or float. The point is to harass feminists; almost any excuse will do.

One of those on the “registry,” a radical feminist who posts online as Vliet Tiptree , has indeed said some fairly vile things about the male gender; she is the only one who might conceivably be described as a “bigot.” But others are there on trumped up “charges” based on highly tendentious readings of some of their writing; it’s clear that they’ve been targeted mainly because they have been publicly critical of the men’s rights movement.

Meanwhile, another of the alleged feminist bigots is not a feminist at all, but rather a traditional-minded “mom blogger” who aroused Elam’s fury by saying that she didn’t want male daycare volunteers taking her daughter to the bathroom, and for suggesting (incorrectly) that men make up 99% of abusers. (She has since apologized, but remains on the “registry.”)

And one recent candidate for inclusion, a feminist blogger whom Elam has pledged to “stalk,” seems to have made it on Elam’s naughty list simply because she has helped to highlight how pervasive harassment of women and feminists is online. Complain about harassment; get harassed. But Elam’s “critiques” of her are all suspiciously vague. It’s not clear if he has read even a single one of her blog posts. Nonetheless, he promises her that

by the time we are done you will wax nostalgic over the days when all you had to deal with was someone expressing a desire to fuck you up your shopworn ass.

In a post from some months back, Elam offered a similarly psychosexually charged justification for his campaign to “Fuck Their Shit Up.” Directly addressing the “feminazi scumbags reading this right now,” he declared:

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.

Let’s repeat that last bit for emphasis:

the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.

Does anyone still doubt that the aim of A Voice for Men and Register-Her.com in publishing personal information of their enemies is to intimidate – indeed, to terrorize?

Does anyone still doubt that their campaign is driven by hate?

Does anyone still doubt that they don’t give a shit if their actions cause someone to be physically assaulted or even killed?

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Why “F*cking Their Sh*t Up” is f*cked up.

Here’s a picture someone posted to Reddit about a day ago:

Found on Reddit.

The general consensus amongst Redditors who saw the post was that it was hilarious. At last count, the post had gotten 1,157 up votes and 318 down votes, giving it 830 net upvotes. That’s a shitload, even for Reddit; it’s gotten more net upvotes than all but one of the posts currently on the front page of the subreddit (r/vertical) it was posted in.

It’s also pretty fucking offensive — a rape joke, a murder-of-women joke, and a necrophilia joke all rolled into one. Sure, it’s a “joke,” but it wouldn’t be hard to make the argument that pictures like this one, which make violence against women into a joke, can actually serve to encourage such violence.

If you did believe this, what would be the appropriate reaction to such a picture? You could post critical remarks about it in the comments section for the post on Reddit. You could post about it in ShitRedditSays, a subreddit devoted to ferreting out misogyny and racism and other bigotries on Reddit. You could post about it on your blog.

Or you could declare the picture an “unambiguous call for murder” and the person responsible for it to be a ” depraved and murderous male supremacist.” You could offer a reward for information on that person’s real identity, and post that person’s personal information — including their phone number, their place of employment, their home address — online. And if someone points out that posting such information might lead to this person being physically harmed or even killed, you could say: I don’t give a shit.

But that would be wrong.

It would also be terribly time-consuming, because crap like this gets posted to Reddit all the fucking time.

The proper response to speech you don’t like, however vile you think it is,  isn’t violence or harassment, but more speech.

If what someone says goes beyond the bounds of free speech, you have other options. If someone threatens you personally, in a posting on the internet or by letter or email or phone call, you have the right to (and you should) report them to the proper authorities. If someone threatens you physically, you have the right to defend yourself.

But a misogynistic picture on the internet is not a threat to you. Nor is a misandrist video. These things are challenges — and in many ways opportunities — for you to make your case against hate. Responding to shit you don’t like on the internet with harassment and threats — implicit or explicit — of violence? That is hate.

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Men Who Hate Women and the Women They Try to Date: Another visit to the Annals of Online Dating

What is this fucking shit?

A lot of guys who try online dating (of the heterosexual kind) complain that they send out message after message to the ladies and get no responses. Now, I’m no dating expert, but I would like to offer these gentlemen a piece of advice that I feel could dramatically improve their chances. Here it is:

If the message you are sending the lass you fancy would get upvotes on The Spearhead, do not send it.

This seems like a fairly self-evident point, but it’s one that a lot of guys don’t seem to understand, at least judging from some of the awful online come-ons posted at the always fabulous A(n)nals of Online Dating. Take this fella:

 [M]en have an obligation to rescue kittens from burning buildings, pay for your drinks, hold the door open for you, keep their hair neat, go to war and many other things. I’m just saying… Society worldwide really does put more obligations on men than women all around. There are few things women have to do… Shaving your legs is one of them.

I’m not sure how exactly this topic came up in conversation, but I’m pretty sure that Mr. Mammoth-Hunting Kitten-Rescuing Door-Holder-Opener and Lady Who Doesn’t Shave Her Legs are probably not a match made in Internet heaven.

This guy’s strategy is also somewhat problematic:

A so-cal Brooklyn transplant who believes in grammar, manners, music, and humor. I’m nice to my mother, always smile at dogs and babies, and am in the process of pleading that statutory rape charge down to a misdemeanor.

Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to open with a joke about raping underage girls. Assuming it is a joke.

This message would be a bad idea regardless of gender:

RON PAUL REVOLUTION!! GIVE US BACK OUR CONSTITUTION!!!! lol sorry

Sorry indeed.

This next fellow is a bit of a Stealth Misogynist, in that he starts out with some actual compliments directed toward an actual women. Really creepy compliments, but complements nonetheless. Then we get a plot twist that’s about as shocking as the big reveal in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Which is to say, so obvious that it could probably be spotted from space.

When I look at you I see very happy, fun loving, sexy, good girl. I love looking through your photos, I only wish there were more. Do you enjoy being obedient to the male figures in your life?

David K. Meller, is that you?

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MRA: Who cares if #MenCallYouThings? It’s not like women have any real problems.

Fried rice. Frequently confused with "fried ice."

Oh, ladies, must you complain so much? I mean, who cares if every time you say something on the internet some random dude threatens to rape you? White and Nerdy, the dude behind the Omega Virgin Revolt blog, doesn’t care, and he wants you to know it:

#mencallmethings is just another example of how women (in first world countries) don’t have any actual problems.  Between the government and manginas doing everything for women, no woman has any true problems.  Any “problem” a woman has is because of one of these reasons:

1. A desire for the equivalent of fried ice.  IOW she wants something that is physically impossible.

2. Failed attempts at defrauding, stealing from, or otherwise attempting to enslave men.

That’s it.  When a woman has to go through 1% of what a typical non-alpha man has to go through then maybe she can talk about having actual problems.  Until that happens women should keep their mouths shut.

Exactly. We need to stop talking about men raping women to focus on the much more important issue of women not having sex with White and Nerdy.

But I am wondering about one thing. Is it possible that the women in question were asking for fried rice instead of fried ice? Because fried rice is totally a thing, and if you call up the proper restaurant someone will literally bring it to your door.

Now I’m hungry.

NOTE: This post may contain ….

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Showdown: #MenCallMeThings versus The Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics

The most common “critique” of the #mencallmethings hashtag  that blew up on Twitter last week was that the women posting examples of misogynistic shit they got called online were making a big deal out of nothing. As the always-charming Ferdinand Bardamu so memorably put it:

It’s funny, then, that when MRAs find themselves described with less-than-flattering language they have a strange tendency to act like they’ve suddenly been struck with a case of the vapors. Witness the reaction of MRAs when someone calls them the “c-word.” No, not “cunt” – “creep.” As one outraged Men’s Rights Redditor recently put it, in a comment with 30+ net upvotes:

Creep shaming is probably one of the most insidious and anti-equality things you can do. The ability to label men as “creepy” is just one privilege that women enjoy, and a constant source of fear of ostracizing that all men must fear in our society.

When MRAs feel themselves being oppressed by such clearly man-hating language, they often refer to something called the Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics, which, well, catalogues their language grievances in detail. According to the author of the  Catalogue,

Shaming tactics are emotional devices meant to play on a man’s insecurities and shut down debate.  They are meant to elicit sympathy for women and to demonize men who ask hard questions.  Most, if not all, shaming tactics are basically ad homimem attacks.

Such shaming tactics, the author of the Catalogue says, with no evident awareness of the irony, are often used by “histrionic …  female detractors who refuse to argue their points with logic” and the male “gynocentrists” who ally with them.

Here are some of the awful “shaming” remarks that get directed at MRAs, according to the Catalogue of Shaming Tactics:

 “Stop whining!”

 “Suck it up like a man!”

“You need to get over your anger at women.”

“You’re afraid of a strong woman!”

“You are so immature!”

“You are just bitter because you can’t get laid.”

“Are you gay?”

 “That’s a sexist stereotype!”

 “You need therapy.”

“You make me feel afraid.”

 “Weirdo!”

 “Loser!”

“You are so materialistic.”

 “No woman will marry you with that attitude.”

“You are insensitive to the plight of women.”

Did someone just use the word "creep?"

Is that last one even an insult? It’s a fairly accurate description of a lot of MRAs, who take a certain pride in being “insensitive to the plight of women.”

So now that we’ve seen the horrible abuse that MRAs have to put up with on a daily basis, let’s take a quick look at some of the things that women and feminists regularly get from their detractors, as posted to the #mencallmethings hashtag and sent to Sady Doyle, who originated the hashtag. (These are all taken from a great post she did in the aftermath of #mencallmethings’ big blowup.) I think you will find the comparison instructive.  Let’s start with the more straightforward slurs. (TRIGGER WARNING for, well, just about everything in the quotes that follow.)

Slut, cunt, bitch, whore, ugly, dyke, lesbo, unfuckable, crazy, delusional, liar, hysterical, autistic bitch child, feminazi,  ballbuster, humorless, heartless whore, man hater, misandrist, stupid little girl, shrieky hysterical moron, airhead, spoiled little princess, stupid bitch, stupid fucking cunt, stupid feminazi cunt, an ugly bitter little woman, cumm guzzling closet lesbian, a pseudo-intellectual Insane Oversensitive Humourless Female supremacist.

Now let’s move on to complete sentences:

 “You’re an ugly fucking cunt.”

“That sort of smirk is why God invented anal sex.”  

“you’re so ugly you look like you have downs syndrome, you’d be thankful to be raped.”

“hope you catch a sexually transmitted disease or vagina cancer, cuntwit.”

”Stick a dildo up your dry vagina.”

“the only time your mouth should be open is when i’m putting my d–k in it”

“Your just a gay cunt who deserves to be punished.”

“A firm backhand to her whore face would provide her with a much needed attitude adjustment.”  

“Fuck you bitch….ya need to get beat like ur pops use to do to u.”

“I hope you never have children, your daughters would be such sluts and end up murdered in a gutter by someone like me.”

 You’re “not worth the effort to murder.”  

“[The] only tragedy is that a bullet didn’t rip through ur brainstem after u were used 4 ur 1 & only purpose in this world.”

“what a long winded bitch. You certainly do need to be gagged.”

“You’re an annoying bitch with no friends.I’d love to run you over with my truck.”

“you stupid bitch, I should fuck the crazy right out of you.”

”i surely hope that one day you get raped.”

“[You] can’t be a female scientist, that phrase is an oxymoron,”

“it’s painfully obvious you’re a woman, get off the internet.”

“I will fuck your ass to death you filthy fucking whore. Your only worth on this planet is as a warm hole.”

“Do you need to file a hurt feelings report?”

As I noted before, despite my general unpopularity in the MRA world, I tend to get fewer of these things than, for example, most feminist bloggers with a similar degree of internet notoriety. But I get them. Here, for example, is the latest comment I’ve gotten from the guy who calls himself Nugganu, a sort of follow-up to a previous comment I quoted earlier in which he imagined me raped by ten black men:

He certainly does have a vivid imagination.

But, yeah, somehow it’s a little hard for me to feel a ton of sympathy for MRAs who so regularly work themselves into a lather over “shaming language” like “creep” and “loser” and “you are insensitive to the plight of women.”

 

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“Please Killl Yourselves”: MRAs respond to #mencallmethings

Well, that was … instructive. The Twitter hashtag extravaganza that is #mencallmethings is still going strong. But I think at this point it’s safe to say that it has basically served it’s purpose: to highlight the obnoxious, obscene, often threatening misogynist shit that women who express their opinions about almost anything on the internet get in their inboxes or in comments online on a regular basis. Women with feminist blogs who actually call out this kind of misogyny get this sort of abuse basically every day.

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, who started up this hashtag campaign, explained in an eloquent and angry blog post why she did it: to point out how absolutely routine this sort of shit is. When she started her blog, she really hadn’t anticipated the sheer volume of vicious shit she’d get:

I got targeted. With threats, with insults, with smear campaigns, with attempts to threaten my employment or credibility or just general ability to get through the day with a healthy attitude and a minimal amount of insult.

The intent of all this abuse is simple: to intimidate. When someone says to a woman online “I hope you get raped with a chainsaw,” the point is to get her to shut up. The person who posts this sort of violent shit, Doyle notes,

hopes that the next time you sit down to write, you’ll remember that yikesy chainsaw-rape thing and think, “you know? Maybe this isn’t such a great idea. Maybe I don’t need to say this. Maybe I’ll piss someone off, and maybe it will be more than I can handle, and you know, maybe my thoughts on this topic just ARE NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH for me to risk the headache/fear/irritation/distress/panic attack I know I will get.”

 And then, when you say that aloud, they call you a whiny little girl who can’t handle the Internet. Because, of COURSE multiple chainsaw-rape comments aren’t a big deal! They’re just words! Sticks and stones! …

To you, my friends, I say: Fuck that noise. All of this matters. A hostile work environment matters. Being afraid of your own in-box matters. Deleting your blog because that’s the only way for you to have a normal, non-hate-filled life matters. “Accepting” that continual, virulent, hateful misogynist abuse is a pre-condition for being a lady who talks about thing, or for challenging sexism in any way, no matter who you are: That matters. And if you think we’re fragile, well. LET US COUNT THE WAYS we have hacked it, under conditions your pampered manly self just cannot imagine. LET US DEMONSTRATE FOR YOU the shit we wade through, every day, in order to talk about whether or not we liked that one “Community” episode or Lady GaGa album.

Naturally, critics of the whole hashtag campaign have done their best to minimize and dismiss this sort of routine harassment in exactly the ways that Doyle predicted they would.

The charming Ferdinand Bardamu of In Mala Fide responded to #mencallmethings with a bunch of obnoxious comments that conveniently proved basically every point Sady Doyle was trying to make with the hashtag in the first place. He started off with this bit of rapier wit:

He followed this up with a clumsy fat joke:

He continued on in this vein for awhile, so proud of his insightful critiques that he made a blog post about it.

Encouraged by Bardamu’s example, blogger PMAFT (Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology) announced a #MenCallMeThings Trolling Contest. The highlight of his own contributions to this contest:

Over on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, c0mputar offered slightly more coherent, if equally misguided, response.

The reality is that most of the “misogyny” they face is just criticism to their feminist viewpoints. I see this a lot when I confront feminists arguments, present my arguments, and get called a misogynist, amongst other things characterized by misandry. It happens on both sides …

Really now? Here are some actual examples of comments posted on #mencallmethings (taken from a comment from Shaenon in the discussion here).

here’s some to start: ‘I’ll rape your mum, faggot fuck’ “I’ll come to your house and kill you”

#mencallmethings, impersonate me on FB, & make disgusting sexual comments, post my name & # when I helped organize Slutwalk

cunt, whore, ugly, disgusting, cold, feminazi, shut the fuck up bitch, manipulative, crazy, playing the victim, sociopath

Bitch, whore, being sensitive, little girl, dumb, subject of jokes involving physical and sexual assault.

Any variation on fat and/or ugly at this point just makes me yawn.

I’ve had so many emails and messages telling me I deserve a beating, I don’t even keep track any longer.

“13? Judging by the size of your titties, I’d of thought you were 18.”

(censored version) If you keep talking the way you do, you deserved to get raped.

My #mencallmethings moment – receiving an email consisting of 1600 lines plus of the same insult over and over. My crime? Being fat.

I’ve had so many guys tell me how good I must be in bed because I’m fat and therefor will do anyone

I usually get ‘sweetheart’ just before they dismiss my argument as being ‘stupid’. No counter argument.

Will not repeat the violence that’s been directed at me but this one made me laugh “Blubbering self-important herd animal.”

apparently I’m a lesbian… I was unaware until #mencallmethings.

I’M ON ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND I CANT EVEN JERK OFF CORRECTLY NOW & ITS BECAUSE OF WOMEN SO FUCK ALL YOU INFERIOR COWS

“You should have your tongue ripped out.”

I get sent one rape threat a month on average.

I was once told “get back in the kitchen you ugly bitch” for posting on a Linux board (can’t remember which one now)

Have you ever wanted someone to tell you that your genetalia should be stapled shut with bugs inside, start a blog

How about being choked to death during a forced blowjob? Start a feminist blog.

Not worth the effort to murder: the most recent example of what I had to delete off the blog when #mencallmethings

C0mputar, in his Reddit post, went on to offer another argument that seems to be a favorite of those trying to trivialize the abuse catalogued by the contributors to #mencallmethings:

In the end, veterans of the internet know there is no protected demographic. Everyone gets shit on, but if you make a point of belonging with a group, you get shit on even more, and more so the smaller you are. You know who gets shit on more than feminists? MRAs.

Really? Some MRA types on Twitter tried to get a rival hashtag going: #womencallmethings. Needless to say, they didn’t have much to work with.

One Man Boobz non-fan — whom I banned for his repeated comments about anal rape — tried to post a sarcastic little comment here last night dismissing #mencallmethings on similar grounds. Here’s a screenshot from my wordpress account, with his identifying data erased:

Let’s just, for contrast, take a look at the previous comment he tried to post here:

Another day, another “hope you get raped” comment.

Ironically, though I’m pretty thoroughly disliked across the manosphere, I actually get a lot less of this sort of abuse than most reasonably well-known feminist bloggers who happen to be non-dudes. Oh, sure, I get called a “traitor” and a “mangina,” and once in a while someone points out that I’m, you know, fat, but when it comes to the really nasty shit, the abusive commenters and emailers seem to much prefer going after women. This may be because they are misogynistic assholes. That’s just a theory, though.