[EDIT: The 20/20 story has been postponed] So the Men’s Rightsers are already up in arms about the upcoming 20/20 story on the Manosphere — which, to remind everyone, is showing today, that is, Friday, October 18 at 10 PM EST on ABC. So far I’ve run across angry posts about it on A Voice for Men (naturally), the Men’s Rights subreddit, Rex Patriarch, Stares at the World and Captain Capitalism. Heck, the good Captain even made a rambling 30-minute video on the subject; skip forward ten minutes to hear his misogynistic tirade against the two women who wrote the brief teaser piece now up on the ABC website, complete with “funny” voices. He even calls them “twats.”
But so far the most interesting response comes from W. F. Price of The Spearhead, who uses the occasion to launch an attack on … Paul Elam. Yep. It’s a Manosphere He-Man-Cat-Fight.
Our dear friend W.F. Price of The Spearhead celebrated Columbus Day yesterday with a post suggesting that “American girls” are too weak-minded to deserve college educations.
Price’s misogyny is nothing new, but what, you may wonder, is the connection to Columbus Day? Well, you see, Price ran across a column in the Daily Nebraskan by a female student named Shelby Fleig that was, well, rather critical of Mr. Columbus, pointing out, among other things, that he kidnapped and enslaved many of those he encountered in the Americas.
Those sneaky, sexy ladies, always up to something!
So over on The Spearhead, the fellas are discussing journalist Daniel Bergner’s sexy new sex book What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire. It’s a book that challenges many conventional wisdoms, both scientific and popular, about sexuality and, as Salon puts it, portrays female sexuality as essentially “base, animalistic and ravenous.”
There are many, many, many reasons why the Men’s Rights movement is not now, and I suspect never will be, ready for prime time. One of these reasons is that even when MRAs are doing their best to wax eloquent, in the fanciest language they can muster, about the urgent need for men to save civilization from the degradations of feminism and cultural Marxism and whatever by saying even more bad things about women, they just can’t keep themselves from using phrases like “pussy pass.”
When I posted about WF Price’s viciously transphobic Mothers’ Day post on The Spearhead yesterday, the Spearhead commentariat had not yet weighed in on his post. Well, now they have, and so appallingly that I felt a second post was in order. Here are some of the, er, highlights of the discussion.
Again, a TRIGGER WARNING applies; if anything, these comments are worse than Price’s original post. This hasn’t made them unpopular at The Spearhead; quite the contrary: all the comments quoted below were well received by Spearhead readers, receiving multiple upvotes. A couple of them were even rated “Well-loved.”
I apologize for returning so quickly to the cesspool that is The Spearhood, but I felt the need to note how head Spearheader WF Price celebrated Mothers’ Day this year: with an attack on trans* women that probably deserves a TRIGGER WARNING for its nastiness and ignorance.
So WF Price of The Spearhead, who responded to my previous post criticizing his and his commenters’ appalling reactions to the Cleveland abductions with thoughtfulness and maturity (by which I mean a bizarre and weirdly racist personal attack on a commenter here), has now taken offense to a darkly satirical piece the Onion ran in the wake of the revelations of what allegedly went on Ariel Castro’s house for the past 11 years.
The Onion piece wasn’t funny, exactly, nor was it meant to be; it was pretty clearly the raw reaction of someone reacting with appropriate horror to the details of Castro’s alleged crimes, which seem to surpass even the worst “man-hater’s” vision of male depravity. Price, rather missing the point, sees the Onion piece as simple “feminist man-hatred” and suggests that it proves his point all along: that patriarchy is a lie.
The Castro brothers were neither patriarchal nor privileged; they were low-life predators from the bottom of society. Not to say that low-class men are all bad people, either, but men without privilege are the most likely to commit crimes, for obvious reasons. …
The myth of male power and privilege is just that, and the Cleveland case is one more pebble on the mountain of evidence that exposes it for a lie.
Empowering men in their families will not lead to more crimes against women and girls, but fewer.
Huh. So I guess if we make all men rich, and order the police to stop responding to all “domestic disturbance” calls, all our problems will be solved!
Never mind that Ariel Castro seems to have lorded it over his now-dead ex when he was involved with her, reportedly brutalizing and terrorizing her and getting away with it in part because he threatened to further brutalize her if she testified against him. He may not have had much power in the wider world, but he certainly seems to have felt quite “empowered” in his dealings with women and girls, and the “justice” system didn’t provide any justice to his apparent victims, even before the kidnappings.
And never mind that Price continues to refer to the “Castro brothers” although the police are saying that Ariel Castro acted alone.
Despite not knowing the basic facts of the case, Price seems to like the idea of using cases like this one to push his antifeminist agenda. According to him, his attempts to use the case to “refute” the feminist idea that
male privilege [is] tied to abuse of women … really enraged them, because how dare I use one of “their” cases to point out that they are wrong. From their perspective, it should be a sacred feminist right to use these incidents against men as a political bludgeon so as to coerce more concessions, more power, etc. Some went so far as to accuse me of blaming women and feminists for the kidnappings themselves (rubbish), while a few others sent me some hate mail.
But you know, I’m going to keep it up, because they do not have the sole right to the narrative when convenient tragedies occur. …
Feminists will doubtless use examples of outrageous crimes in an effort to remove more men from their families, thereby creating both more victims and more criminals. They will use examples like the Castro brothers’ kidnapping whenever and wherever they can. We must stop them from doing so, and we must not be intimidated by their feigned moral outrage when we speak the truth about their agenda.
Dude. if you think the reactions people are having to the Cleveland abductions — or to the terrible things you and your commenters have said about them — are in any way “feigned,” then I can only suggest that you may have completely lost touch with your humanity.
Once again, the Spearhead’s commenters lived up to their past standards of moral monsterhood, continuing to put the blame for Ariel Castro’s crimes (and pretty much every other ill) on feminism and women in general. Here are some selections. You’ll notice the one wishing death on feminists is officially “well-liked” by the commentariat there.
The only vaguely encouraging thing in the entire discussion? That Dana’s call for urban genocide got a couple of downvotes. To the two Spearhead readers who don’t think wiping out an entire community of decent people because of the behavior of one man is a good idea, I would like to say “thanks.” And also suggest that maybe you should stop reading The Spearhead.
EDITED: Added paragraphs about Ariel Castro’s alleged brutality towards his ex, and clarification that only he has been charged, not his brothers.
So The Spearhead has weighed in on the Cleveland abduction cases, and has not failed to disappoint.
Spearhead head boy WF Price uses the terrible unfolding drama as an opportunity to attack the notion of patriarchy. His logic: the alleged abductors weren’t rich dudes, so therefore patriarchy is a lie. No, really, that’s his argument:
Happy Easter, or what remains of it, for those who celebrate it! (And happy Deep Discounts on Peeps Day to all who celebrate that tomorrow.)
There’s an interesting, er, theological discussion about the meaning of Easter over on The Spearhead. In a short post, WF Price argues that the uppity ladies of today could learn a thing or two from Mary Magdalene:
One of my favorite subtexts of the Easter story is the devotion of Mary Magdalene, who kept a vigil at her Lord’s tomb, and thereby became the first witness to the Resurrection.
I don’t see it as a specifically Christian message, but rather a universal one: the woman, regardless of her background or past, can attain holiness through selfless love and devotion. I hope some day that our own errant women can follow Mary Magdalene’s example.
A nonbeliever with the clever handle fakeemail isn’t convinced:
Once a whore always a whore.
I have no interest for a whore who “saw the light” aka a 30 year old cock-carouseler who is out of options. I want the young woman who was smart enough to never be a whore in the first place.
Evidently MRAs never take a holiday from being dicks.
Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which inspired a flood of commemorative essays everywhere from Slate to the New York Times.
It also inspired what I think is one of the most hilariously dumb sentences I’ve ever read on The Spearhead. In a post talking about Friedan’s “youthful Bolshevik activism” – she spent a number of years as a labor journalist – Spearhead head boy W.F. Price offers this assessment of the book that jumpstarted feminism’s second wave:
Although I haven’t read the book, it apparently stresses the need for women to engage in work outside the home, which is a basic Communist tenet.
