Tag: misogyny

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antifeminism feminism inspiring misogyny MRA oppressed white men PUA rape rape culture

Up from misogyny?

9

A couple of interesting reads:

Check out Escaping the Friendzone: The story of a former right-wing MRA on Jezebel Groupthink, a confessional mini-memoir by a dude who traces his “transition from misogynist, homophobic, right-wing MRA to raging intersectional feminist atheist leftist.”

Meanwhile, that guy who just got that rapey pickup manual funded by Kickstarter, Ken Hoinsky? Well, he’s apparently been quite upset by the criticism and is now pledging to make the manual entirely non-rapey. No, really. He met with the guy who started the petition about his book, and released an apology of sorts saying, among other things:

The concept that someone could interpret what I was writing to be a rape guide shocked me at first. But I took a long look in the mirror and absorbed all the great feedback coming in from across the Internet…

Here is what I realized: In the most offensive and controversial parts, I chose my words poorly. Very, very poorly. I meant one thing and people were reading another. THIS IS A MAJOR PROBLEM. I needed to seriously evaluate every last word of my writing to make sure I wasn’t encouraging sexual assault in any way, shape, or form.

Ben Kassoy of DoSomething.Org … graciously offered to meet with me to provide alternate opinions and insights to help remove all of the potentially harmful advice. I am proud to say that his was the first of many meetings I will be having with anti-rape and anti-abuse organizations and experts to make sure that the advice I am offering is free of any tinge of sexual assault or rape vibes. I will be rewriting Above The Game under their guidance and insight.

Right here, on abovethegame.info, I will be starting an international dialogue on how we remove the negative stigma and shame that drives men to seek out seduction advice in the first place. My name may have been martyred in the press, but I will be using this opportunity for good.

The answer isn’t censoring all dialogue surrounding the issue ala Kickstarter’s statement on banning all men’s dating guide projects. Women’s rights and “male seduction guides” can and should coexist …

P.S. To my loyal followers from reddit, you should already be aware my writings are not intended to encourage rape. So rest assured the final book will be in the same style you are used to. I’m just taking us to the next level.

Frankly, it doesn’t sound like he’s really learned much of anything from the experience yet, but if he actually follows through with his promised meetings with anti-rape activists he might. We’ll just have to see how that goes.

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a voice for men creepy grandiosity hate irony alert johntheother lying liars mansplaining misogyny MRA rape rape culture straw feminists taking pleasure in women's pain the eternal solipsism of the MRA mind the sound of his own voice

John The Other debates John The Other on MRA misogyny, loses

John Hembling: Open mouth, insert foot.
John Hembling: Open mouth, insert foot.

So the other day someone asked the Men’s Rights subreddit “Why do people think you guys hate women?”

There were a lot of ridiculous answers to that question, but one of the most ridiculous (and one of the most highly upvoted) responses came from our old friend John Hembling, the blabby Canadian videoblogger and A Voice for Men “Editor in Chief” also known for some dopey reason as John The Other. He explained:

Continue reading “John The Other debates John The Other on MRA misogyny, loses”
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advocacy of violence alpha males creepy domestic violence douchebaggery evo psych fairy tales grandiosity heartiste men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny PUA racism

Heartiste: Men need to be able to hit their mates in order to “retain” them

A better way to retain your mate: Be a sharp-dressed man.
A better way to retain your mate: Be a sharp-dressed man.

You may know Heartiste as a reactionary, misogynistic, proudly racist dispenser of manipulative, sometimes abusive dating advice to would-be “alpha males.”

Did you also know that he was an open advocate of domestic violence against women?

Well, I didn’t, until a friend pointed out a strange little exchange on his Twitter account the other day.

Last Tuesday morning, apropos of nothing in particular, Heartiste made the following pronouncement:

When someone asked what sort of threats he meant, he elaborated:

The latter three items on the list (“Abandonment. Shame. Ostracism”) are standard techniques in Heartiste’s dating strategy, but the open advocacy of violence is, I think, new.

In addition to being repugnant, Heartiste’s argument here doesn’t even particularly make sense. Essentially, he seems to be saying that men need to be able to hit women to keep them in line so that they won’t have to … hit women to keep them in line.

Also, the phrase “mate retention strategy,” apparently popular with Evo Psych types, gives me the creeps. I’m pretty sure the best “mate retention strategy” is to be the sort of person your “mate” wants to be in a relationship with.

I did a quick search for the phrase, and found numerous references to two academic studies. One suggested that some women fake orgasms as a “mate retention strategy.” Another possibly more revealing one claimed that men of “low mate value” often insult their mates to lower their self-esteem so they won’t feel confident enough to leave. That seems more or less in line with what Heartiste’s general approach. And certainly, by any reasonable definition of the term, Heartiste and his followers are some pretty “low value” people, both as “mates” and as decent human beings generally.

I also found this reference to research by Evo Psych big daddy David Buss suggesting that violence — surprise! — isn’t actually a particularly effective “mate retention strategy.”

Also, beating up your mate is, you know, just generally a pretty shitty thing to do.

If Heartiste takes his tweets down, I’ve got screenshots.

EDITED TO ADD: Heartiste has really been going wild with the Twitter lately.

Here he claims to have invented the term “hivemind.”

After I pointed out that this belief was delusional, he suggested that I kill myself. Very alpha!

He’s also been on a bit of a racist rampage, posting lots of stuff like this:

See also here, here, here, here, and here.

Phrasing your racism in pseudoscientific terms doesn’t make it right, dude. It just makes you a pretentious racist.

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antifeminism domestic violence I'm totally being sarcastic misogyny MRA radfems oh my rape rape culture straw feminists that's completely wrong

The History of Feminism, as told by the Men’s Rights Subreddit

Let’s take a trip down memory lane with this short history of feminism, helpfully prepared for us by mountainmansOG in the Men’s Rights subreddit.

mountain1mountain2

I learn new things about feminism every day! Thanks, Men’s Rights subreddit!

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antifeminism fidelbogen grandiosity mansplaining misogyny MRA straw feminists twitter

@Fidelbogen is killing it on Twitter with his antifeminist bon mots #NotReally #SeriouslyTheyreAwful

So our old friend Fidelbogen the Counter-Feminist Agent of Male Renaissance has gotten on the Twitter. And even though he hasn’t yet figured out how to replace his generic egg avatar, and has managed to amass only 44 followers (one of them me), he’s been tweeting up a storm in the last couple of days.

Indeed, he’s so proud of his recent tweets that he screenshotted a bunch of them and put them on his blog under the title Casting Your Breadcrumbs Upon the Water. (Huh. I thought the expression was “Cast your bread upon the waters.” Maybe Fidelbogen is hoping to recruit some ducks?)

Anyway, I thought I’d give his timely tweety wisdom a somewhat wider audience. I hope he won’t mind.

 

tweets

Can you all suggest some more Fidelbogenisms for him to post?

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feminism misogyny MRA PUA racism rape rape culture

From the mouths of trolls: Rape is unneccessary if you’ve got “game.”

bad_reason

So my Mighty White of You post — about the demographics of the Men’s Rights subreddit — drew the attention of Obsidian, a longtime Manosphere blogger who has been described by some of his comrades as “the Blackest Man of the Manosphere” (not that this is much of an accomplishment in that lily-white world). He stuck around for some not-terribly productive discussions of race and feminism, pickup artistry, and I can’t remember the rest because I just sort of stopped caring after a while.

But there was one thing he said — a passing remark in a long comment — that stood out to some of the commenters here, and which I thought was revealing enough to warrant highlighting in a post:

I don’t support rape for a very simple reason – because it’s not necessary. A Man with Game doesn’t need to rape anyone.

That … is not a good reason to “not support” rape.

Really, that’s probably the worst reason to “not support” rape besides “I don’t have enough time in my busy schedule to rape anyone today” or “I might muss up my new suit raping someone.”

Do you really need to search for reasons to “not support” rape beyond, you know, the idea that violating other people for your own selfish pleasure is wrong?

PUAs: Even the ones who aren’t directly advocating sexual assault have some pretty fucked up ideas about rape.

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creepy men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny PUA rape rape culture reddit sexual assault sexual harassment

A Sexual Assault How-To by a sleazeball Redditor? Thanks, Kickstarter! [UPDATED: Kickstarter: “We were wrong.”]

redditalienmeme

So you may have heard about that Kickstarter that raised $16,000 for a loathsome Reddit PUA’s “handbook on how to bully women who don’t like you into sex, while preserving your claims to believe you had consent should you need to tell the police,” as Amanda Marcotte aptly described it in her post on it yesterday. Slate’s Alyssa Rosenberg also has some thoughts on it.

I don’t really have anything to add.

There’s a petition up demanding that Kickstarter simply refuse to fund what is essentially a how-to guide to sexual assault. Last I checked, it had gotten nearly 60,000 signatures.

EDITED TO ADD: Casey Malone, who wrote the blog post that brought this awful project to the attention of people outside of the sleazier corners of Reddit, wrote Kickstarter about it and got a response suggesting that Kickstarter, while planning to go ahead and fund the project, will be reexamining its policies as a result of the controversy. Malone posted some further thoughts.

EDITED AGAIN: Kickstarter has offered an apology. You can find it here. But I’m just going to repost the whole thing:

Dear everybody,

On Wednesday morning Kickstarter was sent a blog post quoting disturbing material found on Reddit. The offensive material was part of a draft for a “seduction guide” that someone was using Kickstarter to publish. The posts offended a lot of people — us included — and many asked us to cancel the creator’s project. We didn’t.

We were wrong.

Why didn’t we cancel the project when this material was brought to our attention? Two things influenced our decision:

  • The decision had to be made immediately. We had only two hours from when we found out about the material to when the project was ending. We’ve never acted to remove a project that quickly. 
  • Our processes, and everyday thinking, bias heavily toward creators. This is deeply ingrained. We feel a duty to our community — and our creators especially — to approach these investigations methodically as there is no margin for error in canceling a project. This thinking made us miss the forest for the trees.

These factors don’t excuse our decision but we hope they add clarity to how we arrived at it.

Let us be 100% clear: Content promoting or glorifying violence against women or anyone else has always been prohibited from Kickstarter. If a project page contains hateful or abusive material we don’t approve it in the first place. If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved. Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect.

Where does this leave us?

First, there is no taking back money from the project or canceling funding after the fact. When the project was funded the backers’ money went directly from them to the creator. We missed the window.

Second, the project page has been removed from Kickstarter. The project has no place on our site. For transparency’s sake, a record of the page is cached here.

Third, we are prohibiting “seduction guides,” or anything similar, effective immediately. This material encourages misogynistic behavior and is inconsistent with our mission of funding creative works. These things do not belong on Kickstarter.

Fourth, today Kickstarter will donate $25,000 to an anti-sexual violence organization called RAINN. It’s an excellent organization that combats exactly the sort of problems our inaction may have encouraged.

We take our role as Kickstarter’s stewards very seriously. Kickstarter is one of the friendliest, most supportive places on the web and we’re committed to keeping it that way. We’re sorry for getting this so wrong.

That is an apology. Some people could learn a thing or two from this.

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a voice for men a woman is always to blame are these guys 12 years old? Dean Esmay drama GirlWritesWhat grandiosity gross incompetence gullibility imaginary oppression irony alert lying liars misogyny MRA paul elam shit that never happened

[CORRECTED] Dean Esmay’s Pile of Lies: How A Voice for Men Destroyed its Last Remaining Shred of Credibility

Dean Esmay: You can close your eyes, but it won't go away.
Dean Esmay: You can close your eyes, but it won’t go away.

CORRECTION: New evidence suggests that the screenshot discussed in this post and elsewhere was not a forgery but the result of a glitch. I offer a correction, and an apology, and a discussion of the implications, here. I have left the text of this piece as is.

Those who have been following the ongoing saga of man’s rights hate site A Voice for Men’s stumbling attempts to explain away the fraudulent claims — and the blatantly faked screenshot — that they used in order to cover up an embarrassing error in one of their stories may have been wondering how on earth they were going to respond after I confronted them directly with the evidence in the comments section of the blog of AVFM contributor Girl Writes What.

The answer is: with a whole new batch of lies. And they are even more dumbfounding than the last batch.

Continue reading “[CORRECTED] Dean Esmay’s Pile of Lies: How A Voice for Men Destroyed its Last Remaining Shred of Credibility”

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alpha asshole cock carousel alpha males antifeminism beta males evo psych fairy tales irony alert ladies against women literal nazis mansplaining men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny oppressed men PUA racism red pill reddit

Bride of the Monster: The Red Pill Subreddit creates Red Pill Women

He's kino escalating, but that is clearly NOT an indicator of interest.
He’s kino escalating, but she’s not giving him any Indicators of Interest.

So you all remember The Red Pill subreddit, that wretched hive of scum and misogyny I wrote about the other day, and the other other day, and the other other other day before that. Well, now something even more horrible has sprouted up on Reddit, like genital warts after a night “raw dogging it” with a PUA douchebag.

It’s a new subreddit from the Red Pill masterminds called Red Pill Women.

Continue reading “Bride of the Monster: The Red Pill Subreddit creates Red Pill Women”
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a voice for men antifeminism drama entitled babies FemRAs homophobia misogyny MRA oppressed men paul elam

A Voice for Men Gets Stung, or TheWoolyBumblebee’s Revenge

bees
Not the bees!

The WoolyBumbleBattle continues.

A couple of weeks back, you may recall, the excitable antifeminist videoblogger who goes by the name of TheWoolyBumblebee got herself kicked out of the A Voice for Men clubhouse after annoying Paul Elam with her incessant (but actually pretty much justified) attacks on libertarians and Men Going Their Own Way.

Naturally, there has been much drama since then.

Continue reading “A Voice for Men Gets Stung, or TheWoolyBumblebee’s Revenge”