We Hunted the Mammoth: The FAQ-ening
Q) A mammoth, huh? What’s this blog about?
A) Misogyny, not mammoths.
Specifically, this blog focuses on what I call the “New Misogyny,” an angry antifeminist backlash that has emerged like a boil on the ass of the internet over the last decade or so. These aren’t your traditional misogynists – the social conservatives and religious fundamentalists who make up much of the far right.
These are guys, mostly, who range in age from their teens to their fifties, who have embraced misogyny as an ideology, as a sort of symbolic solution to the frustrations in their lives – whether financial, social, or sexual.
Some of them identify as Men’s Rights Activists, trying to cast their peculiar struggle against what they see as the excess of feminism and the advantages of women as a civil rights issue of sorts. Alongside those who explicitly label themselves MRAs we find a great number of antifeminist and antiwomen activists we might call Men’s Rights-adjacent – like those in the Skeptic and Atheist subcultures who still haven’t gotten over an offhand remark Skepchick founder Rebecca Watson made about a dude in an elevator a couple of years ago.
Others proclaim themselves Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), declaring a sort of independence from women – while spending much of their time on message boards talking endlessly about them.
Still others see themselves as Pickup Artists (PUA), or masters of “Game,” espousing elaborate “scientific” theories of male superiority while trading tips on how best to pressure or manipulate drunk women into bed. This misogynistic wing of the PUA subculture has a considerable overlap with a subset of traditionalist and far-right blogs. Many of those in what has come to be called “the manosphere” — hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t come up with that name — don’t simply embrace misogyny; they also proudly embrace “scientific” racism and other bigotries.
Still, while some of the New Misogynists see themselves as conservatives, even “neo-reactionaries,” many identify themselves as libertarians or even as liberals. Theirs is a backlash that frames itself as a step forward.
That said, there are numerous posts here that don’t have anything to do with MRAs or MGTOWers or PUAs or any of their ilk. Sometimes I like to post cat pics.
Q) Ok, but you still haven’t explained the mammoth thing.
A) This is a reference to a quote I once posted from a dude who felt women weren’t sufficiently appreciative of what men had supposedly done for them over the ages. Here’s the quote, in all of its weird glory:
We men built a nice safe world for you all the the coal-mines of death, roads, railroads, bridges and tall office buildings. Its $1,000,000 spent per death of a man on a large dangerous project on average now you can just 9-5 it and call it a day in air-conditioned and heated safety. Forget about the wars we died in and the sacrifices made just ignore history or is it now hersorty? You are accruing the benefits without ever having to pay the price you still don’t have to sign up for the draft and who will protect you? The Sex and the City girls will fight off the North Koreans with their Manolo Blahniks?
Men gave you this modern world now you take it for granted we hunted the mammoth to feed you we died in burning buildings and were gassed in the trenches but that was just for fun right?
How quick and conveniently you forget who made this possible.
We gave you Leonardo da Vinci, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy not to mention countless others, Jonas Salk saved half the world from death and you just piss on it all.
This quote is such an amazing clusterfuck of misogyny, entitlement and unwarranted self-importance – not to mention historical ignorance – that the bit about mammoths became a catchphrase around here, neatly conveying pretty much everything this blog is against. And so I decided to make it the name of the blog.
Q) And who exactly are you?
A) David Futrelle. I’m a freelance writer and blogger living in Evanston, IL, and the guy behind the Confused Cats Against Feminism blog. For more on my illustrious career, see the David Futrelle FAQ.
Q) You’re against the Men’s Rights movement. Are you against men having rights?
A) Of course not. As hundreds of posts on this site show pretty clearly, the so-called Men’s Rights Movement is a hateful, reactionary movement driven largely by misogyny and hatred of feminism. It doesn’t help men. It encourages them to scapegoat women and stew in their own bitterness.
Q) Are you secretly funded by the international feminist conspiracy?
A) No. I’m not funded by any organization. Some readers have very kindly given me donations. You can too, if you wish.
Q) What’s with all the cat pictures?
A) I like cats.
Wait wait. So: you do not have admin access and use insults as a tool?
This is tech innovation guys! You are genius! 🙂
Running total: -20/10
Fuck, is this troll as moronic as he seems, or a sock? Either way he’s the loser of losers.
Guit, here’s your education: we are commenters on a blog set up to mock misogynists. There is no “other view”. We’re not here to say “Oh, you people who hate women do have a reasonable point of view!” any more than we’re here to say the same thing to racists or homophobes or trans* phobes. You come in here trying to push the idea that women are less than men, that we’re not really people (the core of all MRM groups) and you’ll be mocked and told to fuck off. As Argenti said, if we had the admin use of this blog you’d have had your pitiful arse kicked off here already. You’re not a user, you’re a troll. Go learn the difference.
Here endeth the lesson.
He’s managed a negative score equal to Obsidian’s Spot! That! Fallacy! score. That takes a special sort of skill.
Speaking of fallacies…Argument to Moderation! Because no, the middle ground is not always best.
In other things, I’m reading LBT’s MST of 50 Shades of
Fucked UpGrey, and I need opinions. Which is worse, a toothy blowjob, or a riding crop to the clit (the later was a dream, hence the need for this question), and are either of those ever not a bad idea?!“Misandry is a made-up word”
as opposed to those naturally forming words that grow on trees.
“very recent”
So?
“to pretend there is systemic and systematic prejudice against men.”
The word just means hatred against men, nothing else. We can all agree there are man haters in the world right?
“Guit, here’s your education: we are commenters on a blog set up to mock misogynists”
Your are just radical extremists spreading fuck offs and false allegations to everyone that has some critic.
Why am I still there? I’m a troll. Delete my posts and block me.
Here’s a demanding one.
Guit, your posts will almost certainly not be deleted. That happens extremely rarely here. However the single person with the power to ban you is likely to do so* when he has a moment, since you’re literally asking for it. Thing is, he doesn’t work for you. He’s not just going to stroll on down because you want him to. It might be a while. In the meantime, if you would like to simulate the effect of being banned, you can do that by ceasing to post here. You know, like you’ve claimed you will half a dozen times?
*But there’s no guarantee that he will. People don’t always do exactly what you want them to, Guit! Important life lesson.
Most boring troll ever. Give it up and fuck off already, Guit.
Why?
The amount of storage space your posts take are negligible at best and completely irrelevant as at worst.
If you don’t want to post here, you don’t have to post here. If people tell you to fuck off, you don’t have to fuck off.
But in both cases, you should really reconsider what you’re doing if you continue to do things that either is completely pointless (and uselessly insulting) or directly contrary to your desires.
Aww, poor little Guity thinks mocking misogyny = radical extremism.
Go take some remedial English classes, sonny.
@Argenti – I’d say 2 is worse than 1, but that’s an anatomical preference. 😉 Also “toothy” doesn’t imply (well, to me) the sort of damage a riding crop would do.
“But in both cases, you should really reconsider what you’re doing if you continue to do things that either is completely pointless (and uselessly insulting) or directly contrary to your desires”
I did not insult anyone. Writing opinions is not insulting. Insulting is explicitly fucking off somebody, for no reason other than “profile presumption”. As you did.
The point is: you wrote I’m a troll, and you wrote that fucking me off is troll moderation. This happens at the end of some posts exchange where I never insulted anyone.
We do not know each other, and you started insulting on presumptions. Not based on what I wrote, and not based on you knowing me and how I do view gender issues. In this perspective, if there is no reason for me to write here, so you should ban me.
You can’t expect me to go away because of your insults.
“Aww, poor little Guity thinks mocking misogyny = radical extremism”
Too simple. Extremism is to accuse somebody being misogynist, and starting insulting him, for the simple reason he has some pro-male argument.
Extremism is the idea that a pro-male point makes automatically somebody anti-female.
That’s what you did with me.
Exactly. That was my exact point.
But if you want to be banned, then why bother even posting in the first place? Just ban yourself.
And if people insult you or call you a troll, there is a reason for that, based on the things you are writing and the trollish profile you are apparently full-filling.
Also, please do not use “you” when you mean “All of manboobz, which is like, at least six ferrets”.
No. In this perspective, telling you to fuck off is because you say things someone takes offense with. Just someone stating their opinion. If there’s no reason for you to write here, then there’s no reason for you to write here (Observe, the logic chain!) and you are doing a pointless thing.
You are willingly doing something that has no reason. No purpose. No point.
No one bans someone else for that, unless it gets annoying, but I do wonder why you bother doing it.
I write when I have something to say.
No, but we can hope.
Then say something new or interesting or GTFO. You’re just regurgitating the same old same old.
“You’re acting like we care”
I don’t care. When I want to write I write, unless you opt to ban me. Your “GTFO” will have no effect.
Why do the info pages on Man Boobz attract the weirdest people?
Apparently, they think that somehow, if they resurrect the dead threads, they will be right or something.
“Define “pro-male”. Unless its saying men are more than human, it’s misogyny”
I think the same applies for both male and female. If one social group has a specific problem, talking about it doesn’t imply they are “more than human”.
I think pokémon.
Wild Guit appeared!
Man Boobz commenter uses Taunt.
It’s not very effective.
Guit uses Harden.
Guit DEF goes UP
hellkell uses GTFO
It’s not very effective.
Etc. Etc.
(I really really sorry for this ^^;)
Honestly, I’ve found Manboobz to be one of the most tolerant and free-thinking spaces on the internet. Don’t think it’s a coincidence that the commenters here are also some of the most aggressive enforcers of Judge Judy’s “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining” philosophy.
But, sure, anyone, I’ll bite.
“OF the trollish conundrum before us present
There remains some statements which represent
An opinion I find perplexing, presently:
The argument I get
which I might regret having made in my head
is that you should censure dissent?
why?
There’s hardly a reason to delete triffling notation from some poster
and there’s no reason to wash away what you wrote
Given that, what you wrote, is about things you willingly decided to post about
en route to some flirtation with a point by point presentation.
Also, no, communites don’t need to lay down the lawn with moderate bans
at all times, for slightest offense
to preserve some sense of personal space and uniformity of opinion
Some people price different views
We call that debate
Being apparently inclined to censure, I’m not sure you can relate?
That was a jest.
You don’t actually believe in rigid control of opinion, do you?
But you do believe in being polite with no point
because harsh words, man, are just so insulting and radical.
As for your links to AfVM, and their further contents.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/spanish-gender-stalinism-part-i/
A link here leads says: ” where they recommend making a complaint to the police for numerous types of issues.”.
That is not strictly speaking what the offered information at informaltrato.com offers – its a list of signs that you’re in an abusive situation. It’s not a list of complaints someone can casually complain to the police and get someone arrested for (the fear that the piece is trying to provoke), it’s a list of signs that your current partner is abusing you.
It contains such wonderful “issues” as direct physical violence, sexual activity against your will and emotional blackmail and threats of death. You know, numerous types of issues.
Which is exactly what the report is trying to undermine. I quote:
So, sure, there are actually occurring instances of serious abuse that merit reasonable caution but sometimes, someone also abuses the law to get their own things.
That’s neither surprising nor a gender issue, it’s just a fucking sad fact of a legal state. But, I quote:
Because “minor squabbles” are the same as an ongoing abuse situation, and the law and the people involved in law making have no conception of propertion or critical thought, and any man will get carted off the moment a woman even hints that he sometines doesn’t beg for his life at all times.
That was sarcastic, and it’s silly.
Legal misuse of a law is, as far as I know, still a crime.
I’m going to blithely dismiss the rest of the report now, because, dear gods I don’t believe in, false accusations are still a crime.
No, that’s a joke. Assuming the numbers are genuine (They might be), this is obviously an atrocious system that’s clearly faulty. It’s absolutely fucking terrible.
It’s not worthy of a name so large as “Stalinist”, because only an blind fool intent on rabble rousing uses that phrase, but it’s still bad.
But let’s look at the numbers in the translated report.
Listen, when someone makes an allegation that is false, and this event causes social fallback, that is a terrible thing. To willingly lie in an attempt to disrupt and deceive, is wrong. No one ever claims otherwise.
However, according to these numbers:
1 / 5 reported crimes lead to a conviction (the 20.1%) and (706568 / 1034613 * 100 = 68), 68 % were dismissed from the court and 120,048 people were directly acquitted (That is, proven not guilty). That’s 11 %, by the by, so 68 + 11 = 79 and that’s where the person gets the 79.9 % of the people reported suffered…
… Wait, what? They were not guilty, or the charge was dismissed. What about the social repercussions for the people – the female partners, apparently? – who brought either false charges, charges insubstantial or charges slight against their peers? They didn’t lose anything, because everything is perfect if you’re a woman? This report has a few glaring issues. When people suffer momentarily during a court proceeding, I am sympathetic to the course, and I would prefer that they didn’t… But to go on and claim that these people may have suffered so much stress that they died is a little out of sync with an ostensible levelheaded attempt at analysis.
In your “Stalinist hellhole” of “Anti-male policies”, 1 in 5 charges brought in turn out to lead to actual court mandated legal repercussions.
Oh wow, I certainly hope that those 20.1% leading to a conviction were reasonable. Assuming this this is a completely false allegation, and someone is manufacturing evidence against me, I think I’ll take the 79.9% in my favor of your kangaroo court. Statistically, I’m not going to end up suffering.
But let’s say I strike out, and 4 / 5 odds aren’t for me today, and someone’s lies bring me low?
… I do 30 days of social work and take a rehabilitation course?
… Your Stalinist nightmare of death and doom for men WHO I NOTE, ARE LIED ABOUT, is 80 % odds of being free and 20 % of having to listen to an anger management class? Okay, okay, I get it, anger management and sensitivity training is a drag but it’s hardly hell on Earth.
Oh, wait, nevermind. According to the report
My odds aren’t 20, despite them writing that in bold, they’re only 10% .
How inconsistent.
Anyway, the reports you linked to also mention a fair few very interesting points on Spanish and international police doctrine – for instance –
… And I fail to see how officers not correctly following the legal precendent to protect their citizens is somehow the same as a stalinistic hellhole wherein the legal precedent is to murder the citizens.
The report even fucking mentions this point, kind of.
So in this hellhole that you described as:
12 / 13 correct block quotes.
It’s always that 13th one that gets you, isn’t it…
Running total: -34/10