How comments are moderated at Man Boobz.
So I had to re-ban a couple of long-banned trolls today, who had returned with new names and slightly different IP addresses but who gave themselves away with their behavior. And that got me thinking about the people — well, the MRAs and PUAs and other such charming folks — who regularly denounce me as an evil censor of FREE SPEECH.
In fact, when I ban people, I do so for good reasons: one of the two trolls I banned today was a longtime MRAish commenter here who eventually creeped everyone out by boasting about having sex with underage prostitutes; the other was a man of many sockpuppets known for angry, abusive meltdowns full of slurs.
Anyway, so I thought I’d give you all a glimpse into my “trash” folder. Here’s a sampling of comments from would-be first time commenters at Man Boobz that I felt would not add anything to the discourse here. But in the interests of FREE SPEECH I thought I’d give these “ideas” an airing today.
TRIGGER WARNING for violent and offensive language. (Sorry about the quality of the last two; you can click on them to see larger versions.)
Not all of the comments I trash are quite this awful. Some are only mildly violent or abusive. I tend to be a bit picky with people’s first comments, assuming that if someone posts a shitty first comment it’s not likely to get any better after that. There are a few banned commenters who stop by and try to post anyway, including one fellow who leaves endless comments trying to prove, as far as I can tell, that teenage girls are objectively hotter than women in their twenties and older.
And, of course, there are comments targeting individual women, whether these are giant cut-and-pasted rants about Anita Sarkeesian, vaguely threatening remarks aimed at other well-known internet feminists, or bizarre sexual comments about female MRAs from fans of theirs.
Once in a while I will get a comment from a feminist that resorts to violent language; I don’t let those comments through either.
And then there are the pictures people try to post in the comments. Below, one of the ones I actually let through, depicting me in a dress with some extremely tall dude. A quick Google image search reveals that it was originally posted online by regular A Voice for Men contributor Janet Bloomfield, in a blog post of hers from last year on Disney princesses. Stay classy, Men’s “Human Rights” Movement!
I don’t actually own a dress like this.
Anyway, the pictures I don’t let through are worse.
Supply and demand, ugh … all I can say is, there’s no demand for MRAs and that pisses them off no end.
(Sorry, I’m too headachey at the moment to read all your post, Fibi.)
Hm, rereading your comment, maybe I mistook “as outlined by people like Octo”. Because what I first read is that you write I think that. I suppose it could also mean I merely outlined the dating market concept. You’ll understand that I was a bit put off by the first reading, I hope. That’s why I pointed out that I actually addressed non-uniform utility.
Sorry about the Word Count there, Octo ( and everyone), t’s just One Of Those Things which I really just can’t cope with, because it’s a seductive analogy that seems to fit some people, some times, justified using science that isn’t understood to end up at prescriptions that science doesn’t leverage. The analogy of a sexual market is one of those “easy, logical, coherent, reasonable and totally wrong” conclusions.
For instance, @Kiwi Girl: You’re totally right.There’s no trade of for utility and perspectives. But not just that – there’s no trade off for different markets, there’s no variation between producers at all, there’s no assumption of changes of supply or demand side situations, there’s no mention of substitutes, there’s no understanding of the impact of market structures, it’s a mix of micro and macro econonomics… the list goes on. “Demand and supply” doesn’t even Work, because in the basic idea of a Marketplace is that consumers want low Price but producers want high prices for their products, and the place where they meet is equilibrium. So… when women are both the product consumed (and apparently a non resuable, exclusive one at that), the producers producing the product and dependent on demand to not get lonely (So the product suddenly becomes a consumer consuming “Compansionhip”), it gets twisted out of control. In basic MRA terminology, when demand is low, that’s actually sometimes okay for all the women who are producers, because that Means they get a great price for their sold product.
It’s a cargo-cult of econonomics.
… but the thing is, it’s also the kind of… thought you can only really come up with if you already have a lot of ingrained, male bias / priviledge blinders and assumptions. Economics assume rational actors who buy high and sell low. Women being consumed as a consumer product Means they don’t have any preferences of their own, that once you pay a given value they’re yours, and more importantly, they remain yours and other people can’t get anything from them – they’ve been consumed.
The entire thing only works so long as you already think penises corrode value, and that being the first to get the notch Count is the key.
And demand = low is because Price = more than willing and able to pay. But a Price = high is = good for suppliers, who want a high Price for their product, so the entire thing is already entirely focused on the sad boners of the men who thought it up, because, oh no, they can’t acccess cheap, affordable pussy.
( also, consumers buy because of utility. The utility of a woman-product is not the sexual satisfaction (never considered, always want Young inexperienced people), it’s not the companionship (Hah, feelings) it’s not the relationship (as if), it’s not the pairbonding (nope)… so what’s left is the utility of being the first one there, getting some pua cred, and upping your notch Count. )
It’s always amazed me that not only do misogynists tend to see women as consumable products, they seem to expect us to see ourselves that way too. Can you imagine what it would do to a woman if she did see herself that way? It’s a good thing that most of us just kind of blink and go “um, what?”.
(Unless we’re feminists, in which case we go “fucking patriarchy”.)
I didn’t complain, I was just surprised!
And yes, if the market analogy only held women as “products” that would be very sexist in addition to, as you’ve demonstrated, wrong. I was more thinking along the lines of counting all “objects of desire”, be they men or women, be they desired by men or women… but thinking some more about that, yes, that would twist the analogy even more out of shape, wouldn’t it? Heh. Everybody would be consumer and product at the same time…
Welcome to the problem of Wages in economics.
“Oh no, all these people are paid by the Companies… but some of them use their Money in those Companies? And they’re being taxed by the government… but sometimes the government pays Money back… and how does the market Work if the people who Work in a Company always spend some of their Money on that company’s products… and… argh! I’m going to go become a zen gardener!”
(random capitalization curtesy of my phone)
Fibi, that was the most awesome takedown of terrible pseudo-Econ I’ve seen in a long time. That was stunning.
I’m sorry you had to be rubbed the wrong way and absolutely annoyed for it to come out, but I’m glad it did. Spectacular.
That said, Octo, I’m not going to yell at you too much more. Frankly, you didn’t say anything I haven’t heard before… and you said it a bit more kindly than most.
The stuff you said has been used in terrible examples in high school and introductory Econ for far too long. I’ve just never been able to word how badly the relationship analogy works.
Fibi, thanks SO much. I’d wager it was just as frustrating for you as terrible evolutionary biology analogies are for me.
Octo, better luck next time! Nice thing about this place: if you don’t understand Econ, or stats, or biology… Someone does.
Actually, it looks like you have had better luck! And more awesome explainy-ness!
*running to catch up on thread*
Yeah, I’ve learned a lot from everyone here. It’s neat. I know what crotchetting is these days! The Wonder!
Well, uh, I suppose… I’ll just wait for somebody to screw up on European history? :p
Yep. It has happened in the past! So, chances are we’ll be debating history again. Eventually.
In the meantime, we can share cute animal videos… like this one:
http://youtu.be/eF4rROGSjOU
Note: Sadly, not my dog and cat.
Doggie’s going to have one very clean ear. 🙂
Sorry, Bina. I’m a very, very homosexual twink. 🙁 (Well, the vessel is pretty twinkie. MY body looks like a deflated bear.) I can pretend to be hetero and single for a bit, if you like?
RE: Fibinachi
Because I’m an economist.
I didn’t know that about you! For some reason I thought you were an English major or something. Also, thanks for that explanation. I admit, a lot of it went over my head, because economics is one of those things that are really tough for me, plus it’s late and I’m groggy, but I still appreciate your efforts.
I’m going to add to the effusive praise for Fibinachi’s ‘Revenge By Misunderstanding Economics’. *much applause*
@Octo
MRAs abuse history and political science almost daily, so just sit tight. For instance, they misappropriate the concept of chivalry, tossing out it’s historical context wholesale. Your time will come grasshopper.
On a less interesting note, someone (Falconer?) asked what’s up with the Beast’s badge with “MOP Veritas” and a bean on stick (a flower?). After some mulling and googling, I’m going to give up and stop trying to make sense of it.
FYI, Here’s the Disney picture JB badly copied and/or traced.
I do like JB David’s Man Boobz belt, which I assume functions like Batman’s utility belt.
Oh, Disney. It’s true that humans are a sexually dimorphic species, but if an alien was to try to figure us out via Disney movies they’d conclude that the human male is, on average, approximately twice the size of the human female. And also that the average woman’s wrist is about the same width as her eye.
Jeez, I hope judgybozo didn’t trace the Disney pic. That’d take her drawing incompetence to new levels.
Even when I was a child with a very rudimentary understanding of sex, I found extreme physical differences between Fred and Wilma Flintstone disturbing. There are a clear logistical problems that had to be overcome to explain Pebbles’ existence, problems which my parents refused to discuss with me when I was seven years old.
Stewart the cat looks so proud of his living doggie pillow! Wish my dogs were so calm around my poor old kitty.
So they think the 1st amendment (or equivalent) elsewhere covers death threats… they’re idiotic as well as violent. Pathetic…
thank you for your interesting musings on economics as (mis)applied by some MRAs to women-products (ew!)
You clearly have more background in economics than I do; on the other hand, I have a twisted mind and friends in low places, so I hope you’ll entertain my left-field questions.
Are you decreasing “demand” or “increasing supply” when you wipe out competitors? Whether it’s —
–Nazis wiping out or enslaving various peoples in order to get better access to “living space” and other resources,
or
–exmormon polygamist cult leaders kicking 14 year old boys out onto the street to increase the old geyser access to vulnerable nubile women?
or
–Winnie Mandela having her 14 year old boy toy’s 16 year old girlfriend tortured in order to get more of the boyfriend’s undivided attentions?
It sounds at the onset like reducing demand, but when you’re actually wiping out potential demand, wouldn’t that have the same effect as an increased supply?
Wouldn’t hetero men who helped establish a carceral regime where a growing percentage of young men are incarcerated, with double-standard laws where women are not encarcerated for the exact same action, essentially be acting out the same cannibalistic script for eliminating potential sexual competitors?
Karen Straughan labels herself “anti-feminist” but like Naomi Woolf said in their debate, I think that some of Straughan’s concerns not only parallel but actually support feminist principles, whether Staughan recognizes that or not.
Some of the systemic injustices that Straughan points out as destoying the lives of vulnerable men, are themselves rooted in what I’d call *externalized* misogyny. For example, the assumption that women’s sexuality is always passive and acted upon, leads to an absurd state of the law in colleges that if a man and woman get equally drunk and have sex, that the man has raped the woman. That if a woman uses a date rape drug on a man and has coitus with him, that she hasn’t “raped” him in many jurisdictions because she hasn’t penetrated him. While the law hurts male victims to the benefit of female predators, it would be innacurate to call it a feminist law, or to call opposition to the law “anti-feminist.” (Sadly this was the argument of all of the women’s groups that participated in the legislative debate over this matter in Israel, recently. 🙁 )
This is my first post and I understand it goes into moderation because (gasp) I read your guidelines. I’m unfamiliar with the term “equalist” but a bit surprised that you’d hold the term out in scare quotes … after all, isn’t feminism all about “equality”? Or am I misunderstanding you–do you consider “equity feminists” to be “equalists” or is that something else?
Thanks,
P
@Petra Pumpkineater
Oh look at this man!
Thinking a sex marketplace
Is totally real.
Nobody is actually arguing that two people who are equally drunk having consensual sex is rape. That’s not what raping someone who is too intoxicated to consent means.
Try again.
I’m also not sure why this had to go on a three year old post.
Oh, goody. Another necromacer.