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.
You’re so heroic to deal with these MRA assholes, thank you!
love, women
Love this site.!
Hi,
I created a blog where i give dating and seduction advices for men in the context of male bashing, global dating and local dating. If you want to have fun reading…
M. dufresne is spamming with a link to a PUA website of his own design.
I hate PUA’s. They bother me greatly. They are the ultimate troll to me. I work with one that’s a sociopath and rather misogynistic but he gets laid a lot and he’s in constant swing between girls with dry spots that last into the weeks, maybe a month. It bothers me that girls continue to fuck him on that scale. Can’t they see the guy is psychopathic and a morally degenerate douchebag? If there were no contraception, there would be more of this sick fuck in the world today. 🙁
I was almost taken into the MRA but have found under more scrutiny that they appear to have many things skewed and wrong. I want truth, not bullshit. If the PUA has anything to do with neoconservatism and MRA then I already want nothing to do with them.
Just discovered this site – damn good one! Nice to know I’m not the only man who feels this way about gender issues! (Can we have an isoarchy instead of a patriarchy, please?)
I discovered this site after being appalled at a bunch of comments (and a whole article) on ‘A Voice for Men’ that were trying to explain either why rape isn’t a real crime or that that most women secretly want to be raped. Thank you for making my night not completely horrible.
The irony is strong here. In this very FAQ you comaplain about ‘Feminists’ being tarred with the same brush for the actions of but a few, and then you proceed to do the same with the groups you disagree with.
The condescension, the mocking, some of the rather ridiculous things you post, you fit perfectly into a stereotype, one that is essentially the other side of the coin of the one you so revel in mocking.
You consistently say that feminism is generalized and yet you do that to the MRA?
The reality is, the VAST majority of modern day feminists are misandrous people. They are often violent and consistently do problematic things for men such as making up statistics and shutting down perfectly fair men’s rights lectures/meetings.
MRAs in there vast majority who love men and women equally (like me; a 16 year old from the UK with an almost exactly 50/50 best friends ratio of men to women) who disagree with sexism, but also have come to the realisation that despite the fact both genders face a lot of shit in the western world (I’ll leave the middle east out of it) but men are facing more and more problems but women are facing less and less.
So it’s a shame you generalize a new movement that needs help and nurturing to help males overcome the discrimination against them and their problems in the world.
Please stop posting the stuff you do. I’m all for women’s rights (I’m an advocate myself and take a great interest in educating anti-abortion religious people that women should have the right to an abortion for example); but you actually abuse MRAs specifically and in these FAQ you actually sadly express that as your main goal.
Manboobz,
Just thought you would want to know that your Troll of the Year Sunshine Mary is back with a new blog: sunshinemaryandthedragon.wordpress.com.
Her latest post blames liberals and feminists for the “uglification” of women.
LOL
I’m glad that I saw these “gems.”
Hi David I’ve been reading manbooz for a few months now. I came across the MRM through Yahoo Answers! I don’t know if you’re aware but they have a Gender Studies section where there is basically a 24 hour misogyny and anti-feminism. I googled “mrm misogyny” and found your first blog, the one with “girls in the hood” about the mrm calling out white supremacists for being too positive about white women lmoa. anyway what was my point? You should check out Yahoo Answers Gender Studies sometime. and thank you s much for this website I don’t know what is wrong with me that I even pay attention to Misogynist’s Rights Movement but I’m hooked. Your website calms me down.
I’m sorry, I’m italian and have few english speech. When in your site I read castration incitement, do you think is it different from the phrases you quote by others?
I mean, I can open a post and say: “David’s site supports castrating MRAs”. I would be in error because it is not what you really believe (I hope), but it seems to me you are doing exactely this with MRAs writings. Am I wrong?
I ask one more: what’s by your point of view the exact meaning of misogyny ? Psico problems with one’s mother; generalized hate against women; standoff against aggressive feminism features?
Sometimes I notice confusion. Me too am in confusion.
.
It’s obvious you’re in confusion.
Uh, no one here wants to castrate MRAs. Where do you get this odd notion?
Guit: “When in your site I read castration incitement, do you think is it different from the phrases you quote by others? I mean, I can open a post and say: “David’s site supports castrating MRAs”. I would be in error because it is not what you really believe (I hope), but it seems to me you are doing exactely this with MRAs writings. Am I wrong?”
Castration incitement?
Guit, David gives links to all the original sources. He’s not making stuff up, just mocking it.
If I had thought that this site was inciting to castration, I’d never wrote a single character there. I rather think the opposite: if I read here someone saying men should be castrated, I tend to put it into its context and tend to consider it as an expression of anger, in reaction to something that happened, I like people capable of feeling scandalized. We must be scandalized against injustice and oppression. What I mean is that if I wanted to attack you, I could use things out of their context, quoting just a bunch of words out of a discussion containing some one hundred comments. I mean this should be a standard for everybody.
Always listen to people telling you they are offended, even if you wouldn’t be. Even if you can’t understand why do they feel that way, take a note it is. This is in my opinion the only successfull pratice for a better world.
>>>Uh, no one here wants to castrate MRAs.
That’s right. I’m a fan of defenestration myself.
Misogyny: aversion to femaleness and femininity.
Done.
Yes. Yes you are. MRAs are notoriously misogynistic.
You want to go ahead and link to where a commenter came out in favour of castration? You know, so we can a) see that you’re not just making shit up (which is my guess) and b) get a sense of the original context?
Excellent word BlackBloc!
Guit — except if you see anyone here say castrastion is good they’re either a troll, roundly told to cut it out, or both. What David posts is from the actual blog posts, not comments, or is favorited // upliked into the top comments. In other words, people agree with the misogyny he posts, while anyone posting anything more violent than “go pet a cactus” (or similar) is told violence is bad, don’t promote it.
Viscaria — I think he(?) may’ve taken a troll at face value. I seem to recall one of our regular fools saying we’d not be opposed to castration photos on FB, just anti-feminist ones.
Oh, sorry, I might be misunderstanding. Are you saying it would be unfair to judge us here if someone had given a big thumbs-up to castration, but that nobody actually has? Um, that would actually be a perfectly good reason to judge us, if the idea had support from other commenters and wasn’t called out. It actually makes sense to judge people by their words and actions. It’s just… people here don’t generally suck as people, which is why that wouldn’t happen.