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.
Um, no. When that “single category” is “the group considered the norm” no, they can’t be oppressed.
Maybe it’s just that I’m well over my Brennan quota for the week, but I’m totally seeing “trans* women oppress cis women by imposing the label of cis” (yes, this is a thing, that actually happened, I can find the convo if you want to gawk in horror)
In Germany, when the Jews were not yet persecuted, they told them they were wrong stigmatizing hate speech against them, because they were not persecuted.
Guit, you understand that there’s a difference between stuff that could possibly be true and stuff that actually is true, right?
Yes, there is a difference.
Ayup.
Right, I call troll on this one – equating the position of men as a class with the position of the Jews (who had been persecuted for centuries) is bottom of the barrel stuff.
Good grief, could we get through just ONE day where the situation of straight white guys in early 21st Century US/UK/Canada/Australia/Etc isn’t compared to the situation of Jews in 1930’s Nazi Germany?
Just ONE day!
“First they came for the Facebook rape joke memes, and I didn’t speak out, because I wasn’t a disgusting, woman hating asshat. The end.”
Seems to be too much to hope for, doesn’t it?
Be nice to get through a day without a troll doing the “no speak English” bullshit, too. Even though he’s so “scholasticized” as he claimed in another thread. Funny how such a scholar can’t give citations. One wouldn’t think that was so difficult. Or that such a scholar wouldn’t pick the difference between “you have shown you lack the skill in this foreign language to comprehend what you’ve read, so please stop wasting everyone’s time” and “ha ha ha go away you’re stupid”.
it started as the former, has passed through the latter and now arrived at “troll with strong whiff of sock”. It’ll probably arrive at “Hi, Pell!” sometime soon.
Troll & sock; two unpleasant tastes that taste rancid together.
Very much so.
Say, cloudiah, d’you remember which thread you did that terrific definition of hembling? MaudeLL was asking earlier and I couldn’t remember. Then I had to go out and get savaged by Maddie “I don’t want to get into the basket” cat and didn’t have time to look.
I actually have that linked, because I added it to my draft post on your Dictionary. XD
http://manboobz.com/2013/04/11/the-slut-who-got-ugly-and-sad-the-manospheres-favorite-fairy-tale/comment-page-5/#comment-311643
“Um, no. When that “single category” is “the group considered the norm” no, they can’t be oppressed.”
“In Germany, when the Jews were not yet persecuted, they told them they were wrong stigmatizing hate speech against them, because they were not persecuted.”
I’m going to dent my wall at this rate! Besides the FUCKING OBVIOUS Godwin, let me break this down to math, it is the universal language after all.
Group considered normal > groups ignored / not persecuted > groups actively persecuted
An example, in case you aren’t a troll, and for everyone else here (Guit, use google if you don’t understand the terms below)
Group considered normal = cis people > group ignored = non-binaries > group actively oppressed = binary trans* people, particularly trans* women (times about 10 for trans* WoC)
Like, my original statement, the one at the top of this comment? The group considered normal would be the fucking Germans, not the Jews, even in periods where Jews were ignored and not actively persecuted.
—–
Damnit, I had something to say that was’t about that! I’ll get back to you when (if) I remember.
Whoot!
::sits jiggling with excitement at Dictionary post::
I was going to go with the more obvious “if they weren’t being persecuted then how is it that there was there hate speech against them in the first place?”
You might be jiggling for a while. I’m too tired tonight, and tomorrow I am taking my mother to a medical appointment so will be limited to my phone for internet access. Although I am kind of hoping it won’t be all day, and maybe I’ll get home in time to work on Ye Olde Blogge.
No rush, just nice to have another post to look forward to. I can always pretend the jiggling is exercise.
Fingers crossed about the appointment not taking too long.
Cassandra — except I think Guit might consider things like that stupid “Boyd are stupid, throw rocks at them” shirt as hate speech against men. If he is a sock, and particular if he’s 90% of our socks, then creep is hate speech against men. When no, no it isn’t.
I was attempting a no goalpost moving answer. Probably failed consider they are a’dancing tonight!
Cloudiah — good luck with your appointment!
No-goalpost moving answers won’t get anywhere with Scholasticized (or is that Elasticised) Troll. He’s already gone from “I had a bad time with my mother!” to Godwinning.
Well I regularly brave the seven seas to feed, clothe and entertain the men women and children of various countries but I guess that doesn’t count as a contribution cos I’m a wee girl.
Helen – AND it means you must be stealing a job from some poor man!
I find it interesting that nobody here has considered the fact that saying it’s impossible oppress men is in fact a prejudicial thing to say? No? I guess considering your own hypocrisy would require far too much self reflection then. It’s odd that many of your arguments seem rather circular and self supporting, “men can’t be oppressed, because they’re the oppressors, why? Because we say so that’s why!”. I’m not going to start comparing the situation of men to the plight of jews, why? Because that would be insulting towards 6 million dead. But more than that, the fact remains that Hitler and Goebbels were novices compared the feminist movement at large when it comes to suppressing and dismissing opposing points of view and even their crimes don’t earn them the sentence of being roped into the same category as you lot
“Q) What’s the deal with the lady riding a chicken?
A) That is a reference to a myth popular in the manosphere: that virtually all women spend their late teens and twenties “riding the alpha asshole cock carousel.” That is, they (allegedly) have near-constant sex with a lot of “alpha males” who are also assholes, while cruelly ignoring kind, nice, hard-working “beta males” until the time comes to settle down and get married. By which time the women are all ugly, adding further to the oppression of the hapless beta male. The “alpha asshole cock carousel” is also referred to as the “bad boy cock carousel.” In the graphic this “carousel” is depicted literally, and with a different sort of “cock” than originally implied.”
Actually, no, it isn’t a myth: it’s a reality of life, I have witnessed it countless times.
Hello. I’m not Praetorian or Guit or that other person in the comics thread, who I didn’t bother looking back far enough to identify. I’m also not anyone else that I’ve been accused of being since March, which was the last time I bothered to check. I’m not on the Internet very much anymore actually. Also, I no longer participate in discussions that stress me out. When it comes to certain subjects, I’ve just decided to think what I think and not care what other people think. Anyway, again, I don’t post here anymore.