It’s pretty good show. Most of the discussion involves social media researcher and Fordham professor Alice Marwick and Helen Lewis of the New Statesman. Those of us in the Google+ Hangout pop in briefly with comments and questions.
FWIW, I appear only briefly in the show proper, but I have a somewhat longer (and a bit more coherent) comment in the ten minute “online only” portion that immediately follows the show (and which is also on this video).
It was a somewhat strange, if educational, experience, my first appearance on TV. (The next time I get webcammed into a show, I won’t reflexively look down at the laptop while talking.) It all went by really, really quickly. Weirdly frantic behind the scenes as the producer tried to slot us all in.
The comments on the video on YouTube nicely illustrate the problem we were discussing; that is, they are a rancid pile of misogynistic shitlordery.
My favorite comment is this one from Urhoboman5 about Rebecca Watson:
At 5;30 that chick has a youtube channel. Just type in rebecca feminist and you’ll find it. Interesting how most of her videos are voted down. Sometimes as much as 80% negative because the stuff she says is pure nonsense.
That’s right. He actually thinks that the fact that her videos are targeted by downvote squads proves that she’s wrong to talk about harassment. She’s harassed by dudes who don’t like her talking about harassment so therefore it’s “nonsense” for her to talk about harassment. Brilliant.
Fellas! Have you ever fantasized about a world in which men and women live totally segregated lives, but gotten hung up on what we might call “the stripper problem?” Over on The Spearhead, walking in hell2 has come up with a solution to this dilemma.
I think the next step of the men’s awareness movement should be something like this: a s separation of the sexes.
I would like to see a contractor or developer challenge the system and create a living community for men only: shopping mall, apartments, gym, etc. The legal precedent could be something like the desire for male patrons to avoid any type of legal hassles or the negative perceptions and harassment that are thrown on them by women, white knights, and manginas. I for one would live in such a community just to avoid the disgusting sight, smell, sound, and evil motives of Westernized females. The community could have men’s entertainment, where strippers, etc could come to work, but could not live in the community.
What do we want? Gender Segregation! (Except for Strippers)
When do we want it? Now!
I would also like to see the work place separated into male and female sections, where it would be impossible to hear or see any female coworker during the day.
Once I shared a small office with two women around 15 years older than me. One day one of the women was out of the office. I was talking to the other one and I received a phone call so I had to take it. The women with who I was talking, got angry that I took the call cutting off our conversation. About one minute later she accused me of “coming at her.” I just turned and ignored her. If she wanted, she could have made that accusation to my boss and got me into big trouble. The sick thing is, the woman was so old and ugly, no romantic thought had ever entered my head about her. This was going to be my defense had she pushed her sick agenda.
This is pretty much a textbook example of the concept of the “unreliable narrator” you may recall from English class.
Separate “male only” communities and job spaces are an organized and commercial form of MGTOW. I think it is the next logical step. Western women are just too toxic to mix and live with and not worth the risk of being harassed and falsely accused and sent to prison.
18 upvotes and 2 downvotes, last I checked.
Imma let you finish, walking in hell2, but Anthony Zarat had one of the best male-female segregation videos of all time!
“I’ve found another incredibly dopey statement from JohnTheOther!”
So our blabby friend JohnTheOther has an especially blabby piece up on A Voice for Men at the moment. Its ostensible subject: the pure eeeevil of unnamed anti-MRAs who misrepresent the World’s Greatest 21st Century Human Rights Movement – the Men’s Rights Movement, that is – through the eeevil practice of “quote mining.”
I didn’t read the whole thing. Mr. TheOther is not what you’d call an efficient writer. Here are a few quotes mined from the article more or less at random that I think will give you a good idea of his, um, style:
Biology, or indeed, evolutionary theory is not really the topic of this discussion, rather it is provided here as example of a rhetorical practice increasingly common among opponents of a small but growing human rights movement. …
The developing practice in opposition to human rights, of quote-mining goes beyond pathetic, into the realm of craven, futile depravity. …
However, it seems that no matter how many times it is explained that a thing formed from (bad) ideas – an ideology, and a group of people, identifiable by sex, are two distinct things, gender ideologues continue to conflate them. …
I don’t know if any of this makes any more sense in context, as I didn’t read the context. Let’s continue:
A year ago, I wrote an article focusing on the necessary public repudiation of violence, and the responsibility of open opposition to those who advocated or promoted a climate of acceptable violence, including those who openly advocate murder, such as a group of swedish feminists, and eugenics advocates on the squalid radical-hub. Statements from my original piece were quoted by at least one amoral zombie, and reframed to present my view as one which called for violence.
Of course, the author of those yellow pixels might not have realized that the original article, along with it’s unambiguous opposition to violence was posted on a site with substantially higher traffic than his own. The craven and stupid dishonesty of the quote-miner was apparent to all but a few, blinded by their own ideological goggles.
Oh, wait, I think those last two paragraphs were supposed to be about me. And I think they were supposed to refer to this post of mine, which took a look at a post of his that defended A Voice for Men’s “outing” of a group of Swedish feminists that the AVFM crew had decided, on the basis of a brief video promoting a theatrical production, were “murder advocates.” His post contained the following (unedited) paragraphs.
That’s right manboob, identifying a group of self-declared murder advocates to the public is more important than protecting those murder advocates from the consequences of advocating murder.
In the truth-is-fiction world of Futrelle’s mind, the men’s right advocates calling for public identification of a hate organization have been transmogrified into promoters of violence.
And what if they get killed David? What if rather than be arrested – as promoters of hate, and public advocates of murder, what if these depraved and murderous female supremacists come to harm at the hands of a citizen. If that happens, it will mean that a society’s system of law, designed to prevent hate organizations, and to allow redress of grievance through non violent due process is gone, wiped out by your ideology of violence and hate. That’s what you’re defending, David.
In my post, I quoted the final paragraph; here I have included the two preceding grafs to give it a bit more, what’s that word, context.
Of course, a couple of paragraphs by themselves are still kind of “out of context” I guess. Since I am pretty sure no one would like it if I simply pasted in the entire post from JtO here, I will instead direct you to his original post, here. You may make of it what you wish. I rather doubt that you will see it as a clearheaded treatise of nonviolence. Especially with that line: “And what if they get killed David?” (Which you can read in context above, or, again, in his original post. Let me link to it a sixth time here, just to make sure you know how to find his original words in context. Oops, that’s seven times now)
Interesting that a master debater of Mr. TheOther’s caliber somehow forgot to provide even one link to the controversy he was referring to, so people might be able to see for themselves what had happened, and judge his claims accordingly. I wonder why that might be?
I’ll skip the next bit in Mr. TheOther’s latest post, in which Mr.TheOther suggests that an opponent of his might have taken a quote of his out of context in a way that makes him look racist and homophobic. But since he offers no links to the actual discussion, there’s no way of judging whether this particular quote-mining claim is true. (Perhaps this discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit could shed some light on it?)
In any case, if we put this particular discussion in a broader, er, context, there is certainly ample evidence of homophobia amongst the A Voice for Men crowd, as I have pointed out here and here. (Protip: If you want to convince people you are not homophobic, you should probably not feature a video mocking “lesbo-bos” in the sidebar of the site you help to run.)
Anyway, this next bit of his definitely has something or other to do with me:
Bottom feeding quote miners indulging in snarky feats of futrelian deceit likely do win rhetorical brownie points, at least when seen through their own ideological goggles. But they are cementing their own a public persona which will wear about as comfortably as klan robes do at a NAACP meeting. The altered landscape this movement is building is not someday, it is now, and it is coming faster all the time.
Uh, dude, my last name has two L’s in it. It should be “Futrellian deceit.” If you’re going to turn my name into a slur, at least spell it correctly.
For individuals in opposition to human rights of men and boys now, whether through lying, repetition of old, false dogmas, or the craven tactic of mis-represented and mis-attributed meaning, the comfort of a formerly one-sided monologue is over. The public squirming we see in attempts to render MRA voices silent or apologetic will escalate before it abates. But that’s okay.
Hey, Mr. TheOther. If you really want to prove my “futrelian” or even my “Futrellian” deceit, how about this: provide specific examples of me taking something you or some other MRA has written out of context in a way that distorts its meaning.
For your convenience, you can find all the Man Boobz posts that reference you here and here.
And for anyone who now has the song “Working In the Coal Mine” stuck in their head, here’s the Lee Dorsey original:
Here’s an utterly charming response to internet trolls – in song and dance! Thanks, Clever Pie and Isabel Fay! And thanks, Jill Filipovic of Feministe, for passing on the link.
Unlike the videos from Armageddon1115 I posted earlier today, this one is really worth watching.
You can find the full lyrics on YouTube; here are some of my favorite bits:
Well hello friend Mister Insightful
Thank you for your comment on my little Youtube clip!
Most people say you’re cruel and spiteful,
But you’re right, how do I sleep at night? I am a massive prick. …
You probably wouldn’t rape me like you promised that you would
We are like “that”; I really get you
You’re right about that laughing kid, he is a total “cnut”.
You wished me cancer and misspelled “cancer”
But I know that it’s a metaphor. You hope that I will grow,
Just like the tumour you hoped would kill me
Inside the tits on which you said you’d also like a go.
Pure joy.
And let me offer my own personal thanks to all the Man Boobz haters! Hey, “guy who posts on The Spearhead and elsewhere as Nugganu,” every time you tell me you hope I “get … anally raped one day. for real, yeah,” in comments from this IP address, and this one, it gives me yet more reason to continue on, mocking and exposing you complete douchewaffles.
Every few days, it seems, Reddit has some thread asking the regulars there what horrible thing they would do if they could get away with it. And invariably someone says rape.
The good folks in ShitRedditSays recently highlighted one such comment, from a fellow calling himself nickfromredcliff. As you can see from the edits to his comment below, poor Nick felt somewhat embarrassed and even affronted by the attention.
When I checked his comment again this morning while writing this post, I found he’d edited it again. Gone was his plaintive plea for tolerance; in its place, a bunch of new rape jokes. (You can find a screenshot of his original comment here; at the time it had 39 upvotes.)
Let’s all use this as a learning experience.
And while we’re at it, let’s have a toast for the douchebag.
You may have heard of, if you haven’t already seen, the stupefyingly terrible film The Room. The film is so bafflingly inept and nonsensical that you’re hardly surprised to learn that writer, director, and star Tommy Wiseau had never made a film before; indeed, you might find yourself wondering if he’d ever even seen a film before.
The Room (released, barely, in 2003 and available on DVD) is a mawkishly melodramatic, and deadly serious, drama about a man betrayed by his fiancee, which Wiseau has been trying to market as a quirky comedy because no one can watch the film without laughing at his hero’s travails. Rent The Room if you want to stare dumbfounded at your TV for an hour and a half some night. Seriously, rent it.
Seeing it for myself the first time not long ago, I was struck by the manosphere-style misogyny that pervades almost every frame of the movie. It’s not an MRA film, and Wiseau is no MRA, but somehow he manages to encapsulate every terrible stereotype about men and women that most MRAs seem to believe.
The film tells the sad story of Johnny (played by Wiseau), a good-hearted, long-haired banker with an unclassifiable accent who is betrayed at work (he doesn’t get his expected promotion) and, more importantly, by his “future wife” Lisa, who blithely cheats on him with his best friend.
Lisa is portrayed like the evil bitch villain in nearly every MRA urban legend: she’s a self-absorbed twit who, in addition to cheating on Johnny, falsely accuses him of domestic violence and fakes a pregnancy just to fuck with him.
Johnny, meanwhile, is supposed to be seen as a loyal, helpful, compassionate man who cares deeply about his friends and treats his adored “future wife” Lisa like the princess he tells her she is.
I say “supposed to” because Johnny is hardly the great guy Wiseau thinks he is. For one thing, everything he does and says is bit … off, as if his body has been taken over by a space alien who’s learned everything he knows about women (and human interaction in general) by reading comments on Reddit and watching Christopher Walken as “The Continental” on Saturday Night Live without getting the joke.
For another, he’s a rage-filled narcissist with a bad case of “nice guy” entitlement and absolutely no self-awareness. When his friend Mark tells him about a woman beaten so badly she ends up in the hospital, he responds with a hearty laugh. (“What a story, Mark!”) And when he confronts Lisa about her false accusations of domestic violence (“You are lying! I never hit you!”), he angrily shoves her down onto a couch. It doesn’t seem to occur to Johnny (or to Wiseau) that this too is a form of domestic violence.
When, after learning of Lisa’s betrayal, he trashes their apartment and [SPOILER ALERT] kills himself with a conveniently located pistol, Wiseau presents it as the ultimate comeuppance to the cruel Lisa.
While you have to see the whole film to truly appreciate its epic badness, the following clips will give you some idea of what I’ve been talking about.
First, the trailer, which tries its best to cover up the film’s true weirdness:
The infamous “roof scene” in which Johnny tells Mark (the guy Lisa is sleeping with) about Lisa’s accusations of domestic violence:
A compilation of some of Johnny’s best (i.e. worst) moments:
This one (ignore the misleading title) gives you some idea of Lisa’s oblivious evilness:
Here’s Hitler reacting to the film. (Note: Not the real Hitler.)
And here, if you dare, is the whole damn movie in its entirely. (If you’re pressed for time, you may want to fast forward through the film’s five completely unerotic sex scenes, set to the worst slow jams ever recorded.)
EDITED TO ADD: Oh, and here’s the scene the gif above is from. Johnny is the most efficient flower buyer and pug-petter in the world.
Up until now, as you all know, I’ve been a strong supporter of the gynofascist ladytopia. But after watching the following video I am beginning to reconsider. Three seconds is too short. This lady is too bossy. And I really, really don’t want to have to learn how to line dance. Also, why does everyone have to wear a white shirt? Watch, and you’ll see what I mean. If this is the ladytopia, I want none of it!
Look out, Jade Michael and the Fuck Their Shit Up Crew! Sure, your Men’s Rights theme song “Go My Own Way” was hailed by MRAs around the internet as a work of genius, and, in the words of one eminent critic angry misogynist dude,
a veritable anthem for the red pill crowd … replete with a great, purist rock sound, a touch of humor, attitude, and a ton of gut level, red pill honesty.
It’s Red Pill-riffic! But now Jade and the one other guy who makes up his, er, “crew” now have competition in the Men’s Rights anthem business!
Without futher ado, here is Slumberwall, with a little song called “The Hatred of Women.”
Did any of you make it past the one minute mark? I couldn’t.
Happily, Slumberwall has transcribed the terrible lyrics to the song, so you don’t have to listen to the whole thing in order to appreciate its true Men’s Rightsy awfulness. Here are the best bits, by which I mean the bits most likely to make you want to puncture your eardrums with knitting needles.
Men have no doubt
Just what they’re for
We die at work
We die in war
We die at sea
As the lifeboats float ashore
Women & children,
all aboard
Never mind that, as I pointed out yesterday, “women and children first” isn’t really a thing.
Anyway, back to Slumberwall:
We take the strain
We bear the load
Build the bridges
Sweep the roads
Make the houses
That make the homes
Pay for others
But live alone
And the more that it happens
The more I see
The hatred of women
For men like me
Well, if by “men like me” you mean “men who write and sing the shittiest music that has ever been made by human beings,” I have to say that I kind of understand this hatred.
I haven’t had a favorite song in a very long time. But I think this is it.
TheAetherspeak declares
Awesome Song. The voice all purveyors of patriarchy theory remain ignorant of.
Gamenode explains:
Women have never been oppressed but through their reproductive monopoly have exploited men and seen us butchered and enslaved for their own privilege. Fuck ’em all.
KellyJones00 adds,
Don’t fuck them at all. Just leave them alone. Don’t even donate sperm.
Time for a little bit of a musical palate cleanser.
Make sure to listen to all ten hours of that for the full palate-cleansing effect.
