Categories
evil women I'm totally being sarcastic misogyny MRA reddit

All the Spinster Ladies

How spinster ladies try to distract themselves from their deep loneliness

Oh, you ladies. Getting jobs! Hiring other ladies! Demanding to be paid the same as men! You don’t realize just how short-sighted these strategies really are.

Luckily, you’ve got Sgt_Sweetness on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit to explain just where you went wrong.

[W]omen are slowly but surely becoming in charge of the work place. They dominate the HR Department of almost all companies. Especially large corporations. I’ve have never met a male HR person before and I am no young person anymore. This allows for women to decide who gets hired and fired. Do you know what pattern I see though? More and more women being chosen over men simply because women like to hire women over men. …

So this creates a shift in society towards women having more jobs than men. Better paying jobs too.

Ladies! With jobs! Oh noes! Damn those HR ladies, who totally and completely run the workplace, and never, say, just handle the paperwork when some dude higher up on the corporate ladder decides to hire someone!

But these ladies will get their comeuppance, for sure. For, you see:

Women while keeping their thin veneer of Feminist ideals, still want the ideal American family. They yearn to quit their jobs and marry a man who is handsome, funny, and makes more money than she does. …

So what we have hear is a situation: Women are taking more jobs than men and are starting to make more than men. But they want to have a partner who earns more than they do.

Uh oh.

What we have hear is a ticking time bomb. I’ve seen its effects first hand too. I know of 10 different women who are college graduates and have decent jobs. They are also desperately single. Like talks to their cats lonely.

Huh. I’m not sure where he’s going with this whole “talks to cats” thing. I mean, I talk to my cat. I think it’s only when the cat starts talking back to you you’ve got to worry, because then either you’ve just swallowed a handful of peyote buttons, or cats, who could speak all along, have just launched their secret plans to take over the world.

That aside, back to that ticking timebomb and those lonely, lonely women:

Nothing wrong with them: they are in shape, look good, nice personality, and make good money. But they won’t date down, as it were. I tried to set them up on some dates, but they would rather die inside from loneliness than date someone who they view is beneath them.

Just wait until this little problem becomes widespread. Because this is going to cause a lot of spinsters.

Bad news for the ladies, I guess. Good news for cats, though. Their supply of spinsters is going to go through the roof!

Categories
douchebaggery drama MRA reddit threats

Breaking News: Men’s Rights mod on Reddit is kind of a dick

So, funny story.

Earlier today, some guy on the Men’s Rights subreddit made a not-so-vaguely threatening remark about me. I sent the mod a message about it, and, well, this was his response:

Yeah. Pretty sure that’s not exactly the way Reddit wants its mods to behave.

 

Categories
links masculinity misogyny MRA reddit self-promotion terrorism

Guest post for Shakesville

Just a note: I’ve got a guest post up on Shakesville today. It’s basically a condensed and polished version of my recent Breivik posts. (If you decide to comment there, be aware that their comments are much more heavily moderated than the comments here.)

And while I’m doing the link thing, here’s an excellent piece about Breivik’s misogyny:  Michelle Goldberg’s Norway Killer’s Hatred of Women on TheDailyBeast. And here is a not-terribly-excellent discussion of the piece on the Men’s Rights subreddit.

NOTE: This post originally linked to a piece by Michael Kimmel on Sociological Images. That piece, it turns out, hasn’t been officially published there yet, so I removed the dead link and a link to a cached version in the comments here. I’ll post the official link when the piece goes up.

Categories
antifeminism crackpottery douchebaggery misogyny MRA oppressed men racism reactionary bullshit reddit terrorism

Manosphere blogs: Hey, that Breivik guy has some good ideas!

The "thoughtful" Breivik in custody

Earlier today I wrote about some Men’s Rights Redditors who endorsed the views of Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik – without knowing that the views they were endorsing were his. But others in the manosphere have stepped up to defend Breivik’s manifesto (if not his actions) plainly and explicitly, in full knowledge of just whose ideas they are endorsing.

On In Mala Fide, blogger Ferdinand Bardamu praises Breivik’s “lucidity,” and blames his murderous actions on the evils of a too-liberal  society:

[A]nother madman with a sensible manifesto. Another completely rational, intelligent man driven to murderous insanity. And once again, society has zero introspection in regards to its profound ability to turn thoughtful men into lunatic butchers.  …

He’s not being sarcastic here. He continues:

That makes HOW many rage killers in the past five years alone? And not just transparent headcases like Jared Loughner or George Sodini, but ordinary men like Pekka-Eric Auvinen or Joe Stack who simply weren’t going to take it anymore. No one bothers to ask WHY all these men suddenly decide to pick up a gun and start shooting people – they’re all written off as crazies. Or the rage killings are blamed on overly permissive gun laws …

Here’s an idea – sick societies produce sick individuals who do sick things. Anders Breivin [sic] murdered nearly a hundred teens (not children, TEENS – they were at a summer camp for young adults) and must pay the price, but the blood of those teens is ultimately on the hands of the society that spat him forth. He is the bastard son of a masochistic, degenerate, rootless world that pisses on its traditions and heritage to elevate perversity, mindless consumerism and ethnic self-hatred to the highest of virtues.

(Bolded text in original.) That final reference to “ethnic self-hatred” seems to be Bardamu’s euphemistic way of complaining that not enough white people are white supremacists.

Then he adds this repulsive final thought on Breivik’s victims:

[S]top acting so fucking shocked that Breivin murdered “children.” As William Rome pointed out, it’s been de rigeur for all of human history for political revolutionaries to kill the heirs of their enemies alongside the enemies themselves, to ensure that the old system would stay dead and buried. … That doesn’t make what he did excusable, but it does make it understandable.

Meanwhile, Chuck of Gucci Little Piggy offers what appears to be a somewhat more restrained, if ultimately more puzzling, defense of Breivik’s manifesto – or at least that portion of the manifesto that Breivik borrowed from the writings of far-right blogger Fjordman.

Chuck complains that Hugo Schwyzer and I are “try[ing] to blame Breivik on MRAs” in our recent posts showing the similarities between Breivik’s ideas and those of many MRAs. Never mind that neither Hugo nor I referred to Breivik as an MRA. I described him as an antifeminist, which is an undeniable fact,  whose views are “strikingly similar to many MRAs.” (Emphasis added.) Hugo stated explicitly that he didn’t blame the MRM directly for Breivik’s actions, noting that “[m]ost MRAs – perhaps almost all – reject violence and mass murder as a political tactic.”

Evidently Chuck feels that to even mention the MRM in conjunction with Breivik is some sort of egregious smear, especially since the shooter spent “only” 23 pages of his manifesto writing explicitly about feminism.

Weirdly, after trying to draw a sharp line between Breivik and the MRM, Chuck goes on to apparently endorse Breivik’s (and Fjordman’s) notions about the ways in which feminism “greased the wheels to allow Islam into his country.”  The rest of Chuck’s post elaborates on, and seems to fully endorse, Breivik’s/Fjordman’s argument that feminism’s “emasculation of Western men has taken the organic policing mechanism out of the hands of men in society” and thus rendered Western society helpless before the Islamic cultural invaders.

I’ve asked Chuck to clarify if this is indeed what he means to convey in his post. If so, I can only say:  If you’re trying to draw a distinction between your ideas and the ideas of a murderous terrorist, you don’t really advance your case by agreeing with the central thrust of these ideas pretty much wholeheartedly.

Categories
antifeminism misogyny MRA reactionary bullshit reddit violence against men/women

Excerpts of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik’s manifesto go over well on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit

The cover page of Breivik's manifesto

So somebody, and I honestly don’t know who, tried a little experiment last night on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit: claiming to be a “long time lurker and closet-convert to the MRM [with] some thoughts to share that I’ve been working on for a long time,” the (ostensibly male) prankster cut-and-pasted the excerpts of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto that I highlighted in my last post and presented them to the Men’s Rightsers as if they were his own writings.  The prankster also pretended to be posting on a throwaway account because his “GF has a reddit account and I’m not ready to open that bag of worms yet.” (All of the excerpts in question were from posts from far-right blogger Fjordman that Breivik had incorporated into his “manifesto.”)

So how did Breivik/Fjordman’s views (not identified as such) go over on r/MensRights? Pretty well, it turns out, with the post receiving (when last I checked) about twice as many upvotes as downvotes from the locals. “Nice post man.,” wrote darkamir in a comment.  To FascistOrigami, meanwhile,

The beautiful thing about this post (beyond the fact that it hits all the major issues): every feminist on reddit whose bf is also on reddit will be wondering if the OP is her guy.

The biggest bone of contention? That the (fictional) OP felt he had to hide his views from his (fictional) girlfriend.  “If you have a girlfriend who you have to hide things from, she should not be your girlfriend,” wrote one commenter. Others worried that the OP might be in an abusive relationship if “he” felt he couldn’t speak his mind. Tomek77, in perhaps the most ironic comment of the bunch, warned the OP that he might get a violent reaction if he revealed his views to his “GF.”

Just a piece of advice: I would be very careful about sharing your thoughts with your gf (if you care about your relationship).

For some reason that still escapes my understanding, many women go absolutely bat-shit crazy when they are faced with the reality of gender relations in the west.

To this day, I remember one of my ex-gf literally entering crazy-mode, screaming, yelling and physically shaking after I mentioned that it doesn’t make sense for men to get married under the current law. I swear, I was expecting to see foam coming from her mouth at any moment – and we have only been dating for a week!!

Even in more casual social settings, I have seen many women react very violently and irrationally when men’s issues were mentioned in the conversation. So proceed with caution..

Several hours after the original post, one of the regulars figured out what was going on. And posted a link to my post here on Breivik. Needless to say, my ideas got a much harsher reception than Breivik/Fjordman’s did, though judging from the comments very few of the regulars actually bothered to read my post before arriving at their conclusions about it.

Categories
hypocrisy man boobz forum misogyny MRA reddit

The Man Boobz Challenge meets The Men’s Rights Subreddit

It would be nice to be able to respond to this steaming pile of bullshit on Reddit’s Men’s Rights Subreddit, but I have been banned there for the crime of including the subreddit in my “boob roll.” (I’m not going to set up a sockpuppet account to comment.)

MR redditors are of course allowed to comment here, as are the moderators of that subreddit. Even though they are boobz.

Here’s the thread in the Man Boobz Forum in which Holly posted the Man Boobz challenge.

 

Categories
antifeminism misogyny MRA pussy cartel reddit victimhood

PR for the MRM

The scribbled-out face of the Men's Rights Movement

Sometimes MRAs are infuriating; sometimes they are hilarious. And once in a long, long while they are simply adorable. Consider xavan512 (not his real name), a Redditor who thinks it’s high time that MRAs launched a PR campaign to defend themselves against the mean things said about them by “radical feminist blog’s or other ignorant people” who think that:

“Oh those MRA’s just need to get laid” “They are a bunch of lonely neckbeards” “They are just bitter” “They are probably forever alone’s” “They hate women” “Misogynists” ect.

Basically they are trying to make our concerns appear illegitimate because we must be whiny losers. Or because we “hate” women since we don’t adhere to the feminist dogma.

Ok, you say, so far he’s just being sort of irritating. But here is where the “adorable” part comes in. You see, whenever  feminist meanies suggest that MRAs are woman-hating losers, xavan512 proposes, MRAs should respond with “hard evidence” to counter this perception.  No, not penis pictures. Something even better:  pictures of themselves with actual, smiling girlfriends.

Xavan512 started by posting the picture in the top right. Yep, that’s xavan512 and his actual girlfriend, standing in a field, dressed to the nines (or at least the high sixes or sevens). He’s looking dapper in his suit, accented with a bold red tie, and she of course looks lovely in a totally cute dress with an utterly adorable tiny pink purse. I’m not sure if they’re on their way to a prom, or a wedding, of if they just like posing in outdoor settings.

By the way – I didn’t scribble over the faces  on the picture. Xavan512 did that himself, because, he insists, “being publicly MRA is socially taboo.”

After posting this photo, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that xavan512 thinks highly enough of at least one human female that he is willing to stand next to her long enough to get a picture taken, this newly self-appointed MR PR guru urged his fellow MRAs “to post a picture of yourself or mention if you have a girlfriend/wife.”

Alas, xavan512’s plan met a certain degree of resistance from fellow Reddit MRAs.

OThomson complained:

Why post a picture of ourselves with our girlfriends, we do not need the Validation of a Women to make our cause just, i’ll freely admit i’m single and looking for the right person because looking for non-crazy, non-privileged, non-annoyance is a genuine trouble these days, i don’t resent Women for that (Ok i slightly resent their position as sexual selectors for our species because it gives them so much power over men) but on the whole i’m an MRA because i want to defend my rights and the rights of all Men.

Francomaistre was even more cutting in his criticism:

I’m sure you propose this with the best of intentions, but I’m with OThomson on this. Trying to engineer some kind of phoney boloney PR campaign with cherry picked images of smiling couples professionally photographed in semi-formal dress in pastoral settings seems like a pretty dramatic mischaracterization of many MRA’s experiences and subtly subverts the movement and concerns that drives many of us to be MRA’s in the first place.

Maybe it’s a separation or divorce situation, maybe we’ve been subject to a false rape or domestic violence accusation, maybe we’re sick of being stereotyped by the media as dim-witted psycho-violent timebombs just waiting to be tripped, or are just generally sick of being treated by second-class citizens by “empowered women” who can judge our sexuality, shame us, and even inflict physical violence on us almost entirely without consequence.

Someone woke up cranky today!

Here’s the thing: the adorableness of xavan512’s picture aside, if MRAs are tired of people calling them misogynists, there’s a much more direct way to challenge this perception – and that is to challenge the rampant misogyny in the MRM.  You want examples? Check the archives here. I’m kind of a lazy bastard, and I don’t like doing any more research than I have to, yet over the relatively brief lifetime of this blog I’ve managed to post literally hundreds of pretty outrageous examples of misogyny from the mouths of (or, rather, the keyboards of) MRAs. And that’s only scratching the surface. I don’t read every MRA blog every day. And I only post a tiny, tiny fraction of the misogyny I run across.  It is everywhere in the MRM.

If you’re an MRA, and you’re NOT a flaming misogynist, and you want your issues to be taken seriously, don’t post pictures of yourself with your smiling girlfriend.  Challenge the misogyny that surrounds you. Get together with other MRAs, and drum the misogynists out of the movement. Build bridges with feminists working on men’s rights issues. Just say no to the douchebags.

Categories
misogyny MRA rape rapey reddit sluts that's not funny!

Atheist Elevator Redux

Found on the Men's Rights subreddit on Reddit

Here, found on Men’s Rights Reddit, is a “demotivational” poster that illustrates just why Rebecca Watson’s comments about that now-famous elevator incident, and the ensuing discussions that erupted amongst feminists online (and here, in our longest  thread ever), were actually, you know,  necessary: whoever made this evidently thinks that the very notion that a RAPIST would ask someone out for coffee first is so inherently and self-evidently hilarious that you don’t even have to explain why it’s so hilarious.

Never mind that, er, rapists often DO invite their future victims out for coffee, to the movies, out for a kebab, etc, etc first. Never mind that if some hypothetical woman had accepted a 4 AM “coffee in my room” invite and been raped, many of the very same guys now ranting about how she’s calling all men rapists would be blaming her for being a “slut” who “was asking for it” by agreeing to said “coffee” date.

(And I’ll just note that Watson did not in fact accuse her admirer in the elevator of being a rapist or even a creep; she simply mentioned that propositioning someone in an elevator at 4 AM is a creepy thing to do.)

And yes, that is Richard Dawkins in the picture. I’m not sure why someone who presumably agrees with what Dawkins said about the case would want to feature him in a poster next to the word “rapists,” but what do I know?  In any case, Dawkins is now being hailed as a hero by more than a few of the regulars in the Men’s Rights subreddit — not for his scientific work, or his science writings, or even his atheist activism, but for his douchebaggery towards Watson. The Flying Spaghetti Monster works in mysterious ways, I guess.

Speaking of which — the mysterious ways thing, I mean  — can anyone explain the logic behind this comment to me?

Specifically, could you explain the bit about “smack[ing] the shit out of” feminists who’ve stood up for Rebecca Watson? It seems to me that if you’re trying to make the point that Watson and her supporters are reacting hysterically to an innocent invitation to coffee, and that women have no reason to  be fearful or concerned or even just mildly creeped out by men propositioning them in elevators at 4 am, it does not exactly help your case to talk about doing physical harm to feminists (or children, for that matter). Doesn’t that suggest, rather, that women should be concerned about strange men in elevators — because of the off chance that one of these strange men could turn out to be, you know, the sort of dude who posts shit like that on the internet?

Categories
feminism funny MRA reddit

Kate Beaton confuses the Reddit Men's Rightsers

 

From Hark, a vagrant. I photoshopped a little.

Hark, a vagrant, as I may have noted many times already, is pretty much the most hilarious comic in the world at the moment.  So recently the comic’s creator Kate Beaton got together with some of her cartoonist pals and did a bunch of cartoons featuring a gang of superheroines called the “STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS.”

Someone linked to them in Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit. Take a look at the comments.  The cartoons seem to have, well, confused the Men’s Rightsers just a little bit.

 

Categories
antifeminism homophobia I am making a joke MRA reddit transphobia

Make me an LGBT sandwich, hold the L. And the T.

Some clubs are TOO exclusive.

“Kloo2yoo,” the moderator of Reddit’s Men’s Rights Subreddit, is worried that racists in his subreddit will give Men’s Rights a bad name. So he’s put out a call to some of the more artistic readers of the subreddit to come up with a nice new logo for it, to show how broad-minded and all-inclusive Reddit’s Men’s Rightsers really are. Well, not literally all-inclusive. As Kloo put it in his call for artiistic help:

New logo needed, to emphasize racial and lgbt inclusiveness, but not feminism.

Oh, but even that turned out to be a bit too inclusive for some of the commenters there. Specifically, they objected to the “L” portion of LBGT. And some of the Ts. As white_cloud put it:

I don’t think you need to appeal to the L in LGBT. It is well-known that lesbians are the most radical of all feminists. They will never feel welcome here and we should not go out of our way to make them feel welcome. Male to female trans pretty much the same thing. They’ve already renounced their male gender, they don’t care about male rights

Scott2508 concurred:

ok i am in favour of inclusivness and im not sure if i am going to word this right so stick with me , the one thing i am curious about is how we bring ourself in line with the lesbian [angle]  of it all simply due to the hostility that can arise from that community towards men

Kloo replied:

point taken. we can embrace lesbian mras, without embracing lesbian supremacists.

Apparently these are the only types of lesbians in the world.

In any case, despite these design constraints, I have come up with what I think is a very compelling logo that I think will convey just what Kloo would like to convey. What do you think, guys?