We Hunted The Mammoth
Well, the AVFM conference is over. I thought I’d post links to some of the media coverage today. I’m not sure Paul Elam and co have quite attained the level of respectability they were going for with the conference. It probably didn’t help that their PR gal, Janet Bloomfield, kept posting about “whores” and then, during the final panel discussion, delivered a passionate defense of “doxxing.”
Anyway, here’s the press coverage today:
I have a new theory that I think might help to explain why so many Men’s Rights Activists are so obsessed with false accusations of rape. It’s simple: They are so used to making false accusations themselves, about pretty much everything, that it’s hard for them to conceive of someone making an accusation that is actually true.
Naturally, as a critic of the Men’s Rights movement I’m a fairly reliable target for these false charges, and rarely does a day go by in which I don’t learn some new, terrible, and wholly imaginary thing I’m alleged to have said or done. Hell, these days I can barely make it through a Twitter conversation with A Voice for Men’s Dean Esmay without him spouting some grotesque falsehood about me.
The latest accusation from the A Voice for Men crowd – or at least from AVFM’s so-called Honey Badger Brigade – is that all the media talk about Elliot Rodger being an MRA was my fault. Or, as “Honey Badger” Alison Tieman put it in a tweet that she sent to an assortment of media outlets that had written about Rodger and the MRAs,
Anyone who reads the Men’s Rights subreddit on a regular basis knows that when you see the username DavidByron2 you are in for a treat. Well, a “treat” in the sense that discovering a flaming bag of dog poop on your doorstop is a “treat.” Like many Men’s Rightsers, he’s both smug and ignorant, a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
But somehow he manages to be more than just another insufferable mansplaining rage-baby who spends all of his spare time ranting about a subject — feminism — he knows less than nothing about. No, there’s a kind of daft genius to his comments; I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
And so I thought I’d wind up this week with a small collection of the best –that is, worst — comments he left in the Men’s Rights subreddit this week. In choosing the top 5, I have confined myself mostly to those that got more upvotes than downvotes, because, seriously, the thought that there are actual human beings out there upvoting this crap is almost as amazing as the fact that there’s an actual human being posting it. And thinking himself quite clever and righteous for doing so.
Let’s work our way to the top starting with …
Oh, Reddit! Need another reminder that on Reddit, whiny lady-hating man-babies can be found outside the Men’s Rights and Red Pill subreddits? Take a look at this lovely comment from occasional Red Pill commenter purple4th in Change My Views, which (the last I checked) had garnered nearly 150 net upvotes from the crowd there. Here’s the money quote:
[S]ocietal laws are so filled with misandry that in 99% of societal contexts such as going to office, going to the supermarket, going to the movies, etc;, it is men who have to be continually afraid of women.
That’s right, fellas. Women who worry about men harming them are all a bunch of big sillies. It’s MEN who should be worried Oh, sure those gals may look innocent, but don’t let your guard down for a minute lest one of them misander you with a false accusation of being too much of a dude! con
Purple4th continues:
As my investment banks’ Sexual Harassment presentation says, “It is harassment if she says so”. Period.
Really? I decided to look online to see if I could find any Sexual Harassment literature making that argument. A search for “It is harassment if she says so” in quotes returns only one hit on Google: Purple4th’s comment on Reddit.
In fact, the legal standard for sexual harassment — in the US at least —Â is not “whatever the hell a random woman wants to call harassment.” It’s whether or not a “reasonable person” would see the behavior as harassment.
But that’s how it works in the real world. MRAs and the MRA-adjacent don’t live in the real world.
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Thanks, AMRthroaway on Reddit for pointing me to this lovely quote.
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks! And thanks again to all who’ve already donated.
 Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the neverending struggle against imaginary feminists continues apace. Today, one brand-new Redditor, a self-described former feminist, won himself several dozen upvotes from the regulars by bringing them a literally unbelievable tale of his adventures with a coven of slap-happy feminists.
I stopped calling myself a feminist a few years ago when I went to a meeting and was told “men are inly allowed in this safe space if they participate in a slap circle.”
The idea was that it would be harder for me to intimidate with my six foot stature if all the women had a chance to slap me in the face. I left.
Another guy actually did it.
It’s all true. I WAS THAT GUY.
BUT WHO WAS PHONE?
Actually, no. If this dude’s story is true, I will literally eat my cats.
While most of the Men’s Rightsers commenting in the thread seem to have swallowed this story whole, “slap circles” aren’t actually a thing in feminism.
They are a thing, though, amongst bored and/or drunk young men (and sometimes women) around the world, as countless videos on YouTube can attest.
As as site called Hungry Teen explains, a “Slap Circle” is
A great way to bond with friends, release aggression and stimulate the face. The Slap Circle is a game made for the more hardcore, daring person and can be used as a test for finding the manliest of the group. Although adopting female fighting techniques, the slap circle appeals far more to men. Nothing is required for this game, other than a hand, a face and a set of balls.
All you do, is stand in a circle and slap the person to your right in the face, while waiting for a slap from the person on your left. If you’ve had enough, you step out of the circle and the last two standing fight it out for the winner.
I eagerly await stories in the Men’s Rights subreddit detailing Andrea Dworkin’s demand that all men and boys be forced to take the Cinnamon Challenge and all those insidious mandatory nut shot seminars being forced upon all college students unfortunate enough to be born with a pair of balls.
Thanks to Cloudiah for the heads up, and the good people of the AgainstMensRights subreddit for the Hungry Teen quote.
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks! And thanks again to all who’ve already donated.
If anyone was hoping – against their better judgement – that Men’s Rights activists would be inspired by the tragedy in Isla Vista to reconsider any of their beliefs, or even to reflect for a moment on the many striking similarities between passages in Elliot Rodger’s book-length manifesto and comments posted every day by MRAs and others in the manosphere, well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you should not keep that hope alive.
It’s not that they’re not talking about the tragedy. A look through the top 100 posts in the Men’s Rights subreddit, the largest Men’s Rights forum online, reveals that roughly a third of them, including the top stickied post, relate in some way to Elliot Rodger’s rampage and the discussions that have come up online and in the media in its aftermath.
But the message of virtually all of these posts is: “Nothing to see here! Move along!” There are numerous posts expressing outrage that anyone would see any connection between Rodger’s toxic misogyny to the Men’s Rights movement; there are others mocking and attacking the #YesAllWomen hashtag; there’s even one suggesting that Rodger, who wrote about how he longed to watch all the women of the world starve to death in concentration camps, wasn’t actually a misogynist at all.
Take a look. One post, with more than 500 upvotes, complains:
You know, maybe I’ve been unfair to these manosphere fellows. I’m always saying that they hate women. But what if they don’t really hate women? Like hate hate. What if they just don’t respect women, you know, for totally understandable non-hatey reasons that aren’t misogynistic at all?
I mean, there’s nothing misogynistic about refusing to show an entire gender any respect because of some reasons you came up with, right?
Anyway, what’s got me wondering all this is a recent stickied post on the Red Pill Subreddit, home to ALPHA DUDES who totally score with the hot women like all the time. The post, by a dude with the totally non-lady-hating name of bitchdantkillmyvibe is titled “I don’t hate women, I just don’t respect them, and unless many changes within their gender come about, I never will,” and really, I don’t think I’ve ever read a less lady-hating title than that.
So let’s hear this dude out, huh?
You know, maybe I’ve been unfair to these manosphere fellows. I’m always saying that they hate women. But what if they don’t really hate women? Like hate hate. What if they just don’t respect women, you know, for totally understandable non-hatey reasons that aren’t misogynistic at all?
I mean, there’s nothing misogynistic about refusing to show an entire gender any respect because of some reasons you came up with, right?
Anyway, what’s got me wondering all this is a recent stickied post on the Red Pill Subreddit, home to ALPHA DUDES who totally score with the hot women like all the time. The post, by a dude with the totally non-lady-hating name of bitchdantkillmyvibe is titled “I don’t hate women, I just don’t respect them, and unless many changes within their gender come about, I never will,” and really, I don’t think I’ve ever read a less lady-hating title than that.
So let’s hear this dude out, huh?
Here’s a horrible comment from Reddit’s always horrible White Rights subreddit that reveals some of the ways that the central ideas and obsessions of the manosphere are oozing their way into the thinking, such as it is, of the racist right. Birds of a feather flock together, and I guess the same is true of hateful shitheads.
What’s interesting to me is how easily Mr. Saturnine83 here is able to take the traditional racist paranoia about white women not popping out enough white babies to keep the white race going and make the whole “problem” about stuck-up ladies who won’t date him decent white men. For those filling out bingo cards, note the references to”disposible” men and “involuntary celibacy.”
Oh, we have no doubt you could go on and on endlessly. Guys like you always can.
If you’re interested in exploring further connections between “Men’s Rights” and “White Rights,” check out the MRMorWhiteRights subreddit, which tracks this stuff in an entertaining way, and which is where I found the link to Saturnine83’s little screed.
Just wanted to let you all know about avery diverting — and damnably difficult — little game you can play on the internets: Reddit or Stormfront?
The premise is simple: You’re presented with an assortment of terrible comments, and you simply have to guess whether each one came from the hive of whiteboy bigotry known as Reddit … or the hive of white supremacist bigotry known as Stormfront.
It’s actually really hard. I’ve been playing it off and on since last night, and I’m barely doing better than pure chance.
The game was evidently inspired by the funny/disturbing Reddit-critical subreddit, SRSsucksOrStormfront. You might also enjoy perusing MRMorWhiteRights.
