A prostate cancer charity has returned $6000 to donors from Reddit because it doesn’t want to be associated with their toxic money. Chalk this up as another proud day for Reddit.
So here’s the story: With Reddit emerging, over the past several days, as one of the central distribution hubs for a vast cache of stolen nude pictures of assorted celebrities – including not only an adult Jennifer Lawrence but at least two celebs who were underage when their photos were taken – one Redditor thought he saw a way for the newly created TheFappening subreddit to spin itself as a public-minded enterprise rather than as a large-scale enabler of criminal activity: why not take a few minutes off from frantic masturbation to raise a few bucks for charity?
War Machine, thinking positive thoughts about himself.
If you’re worried that your view of humanity is excessively sunny, well, here’s one way to fix that: take a look at the hashtag #FreeWarMachine on Twitter, full of people who seem to honestly believe that mixed martial arts fighter and sometime porn actor War Machine either didn’t beat his ex-girlfriend nearly to death, or that, if he did, she probably deserved it anyway.
In other words it’s a virtual parade of the very worst people currently living on planet earth. I’m posting some of the, well, milder tweets below, but even though I’m avoiding the worst you should seriously consider heeding this TRIGGER WARNING and visit @CuteEmergency instead.
Jessica Valenti – Guardian columnist, Feministing founder, non-man-hating feminist – has been fending off an unending torrent of harassment and abuse since she tweeted a picture of herself wearing an ironic t-shirt a couple of weeks ago.
Last weekend, a seemingly innocent tweet from her– asking her readers if they knew any countries that provided free tampons – set off yet another wave of abuse. Her question, and the cogent column she ultimately wrote on the subject, arguing that there are legitimate health concerns that justify government subsidies for tampons, inspired countless thoughtful comments from her critics. Like these:
https://twitter.com/skzdalimit/statuses/497828918851043330
https://twitter.com/adam_mcphee/statuses/497892354331000832
These sorts of comments (and there were many more along these lines) are sadly typical of the sorts of things feminists – particularly those of the female variety – get whenever they happen to state their opinion about anything online. (If you click on the second one you can see the Tweeter defending his vagina remarks against assorted critics.)
But a reader pointed me to something, well, interesting about that second tweet: It came from a fellow named Adam McPhee, a self-professed “egalitarian” who just happens to be a board member, and the official spokesperson, for a group we’ve discussed here before: the Canadian Association For Equality (CAFE).
CAFE has won itself a certain notoriety in recent months. In May, you might recall, the group’s planned E-Day festival fell apart after its sponsors and some of the musicians scheduled to perform at it discovered that they had unwittingly signed on to a Men’s Rights event.
The group has also organized talks by antifeminist speakers, including the now-notorious appearance of Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto, which inspired some, well, let’s just call them counterproductive protests that we’ve been hearing about endlessly ever since.
But CAFE has been working hard to gain itself a bit of respectability. It somehow managed to win itself charity status from the Candadian government, and has raised money to start up some sort of men’s center. And it has been trying to distance itself from one formerly close ally, A Voice for Men.
Indeed, McPhee himself recently gave an interview to the Toronto Star in which he described AVFM’s harassment of some of those who protested Warren Farrell’s talk as “completely wrong.”
So it seems just a tad ironic, to say the least, to see McPhee happily harassing Jessica Valenti on Twitter.
PS: Adam, I agree with Jessica on that whole tampon thing. So feel free to Tweet me your thoughts about my gaping vagina.
Actual “meme” from AVFM. I did not make it up or choose the font.
That last post was a bit, well, grim. So I thought I’d lighten the mood with some terrible, terrible memes from A Voice for Men’s Facebook page. They’re so Men’s Human Rightsy that you can practically smell the human rights wafting off of them!
Either way, enjoy! For a fun game, see how many different examples of ideas that do not actually enhance human rights you can find in the memes below! For example, I found both misogyny and transphobia! See what else you can find!
Confused Cats Against Feminism has gone viral, as the Internet kids say.
In less than a week, my humble Tumblr blog has picked up more than 12,000 followers on Tumblr and has generated nearly 20,000 “notes.” It’s been featured in two dozen well-known publications so far, ranging from Jezebel to Cosmopolitan to Le Monde (yes, the Le Monde), and on who knows how many lesser-known sites. It was discussed on The Reid Report on MSNBC. And my assorted inboxes are swelling with literally hundreds of submissions.
So why — other than KITTIES — has the blog struck such a chord?
Ladies, watch out! Men’s Rights Redditor warspite88 is on to you! Your painted faces don’t fool him! Your concealer cannot conceal the truth! He knows your lips aren’t really that red! He knows your eyelids aren’t really that blue!
Yes, that’s right: it’s time for another angry MRA rant explaining to us why women wearing makeup oppresses men, somehow.
It is my belief that women have become so beautiful through the use of makeup that most women and men are influenced dramatically and view women more as goddess and men as dogs. The power of makeup has helped to fuel a war against men’s basic human rights.
A couple of days ago, you see, a Twitterer calling himself RedPillPhil suggested I was a bit of a coward for taking on an “easy target” like A Voice for Men rather than taking on the leading intellectual lights of the so-called “Dark Enlightenment” like … Heartiste, and Vox Day … who I actually write about all the time.
My laughter must have carried all the way to, well, wherever Vox Day lives, because Mr. Day soon appeared on Twitter and challenged me to a debate — on women’s right to vote. The very notion of two dudes earnestly debating female suffrage – in 2014, no less – struck me as beyond absurd, so I sent back what I thought was an appropriately dismissive Tweet:
The Gestapo-like David Futrelle takes on the principals of Indiscriminate Discriminatory Hatred Elementary School. Art by Mavaddat Javid
If you’ll forgive the self-indulgence here, I thought this little Twitter exchange between some of the Men’s Rights Movement’s top men was too good not to share:
Aside from being a professional hack, does @DavidFutrelle have a meaningful avocation? Why does @DavidFutrelle indiscriminately mock MRAs?
To paraphrase Marge Gunderson, fictional Chief of Police in Brainerd, Minnesota, I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Attila.
EDITED TO ADD: Amazing illustration by Mavaddat Javid, aka @mavaddat on Twitter.
Are women turning against feminism? Over on The Spearhead, WF Price sets forth the proposition that “the younger generation of women [is] rejecting ‘feminism’ in stronger terms than I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”
His proof for this? A Tumblr blog called Women Against Feminism, featuring a couple dozen photos of women holding signs denouncing feminism. Or what they think feminism is, anyway.
Some of these women are fairly articulate about the source of their hostility against feminism: they’re traditionalists who don’t like being judged for their choices:
