We Hunted the Mammoth: The FAQ-ening
Q) A mammoth, huh? What’s this blog about?
A) Misogyny and the ongoing reactionary backlash, not mammoths.
This blog began in 2010 as a way to chronicle (and ridicule) the ideas of the misogynistic Manosphere. When I started, the Manosphere was a niche thing, confined to a relative handful of reactionary blogs and the Men’s Rights subreddit. Since then we’ve seen a broad reactionary and misogynistic backlash. Now many of the central ideas of the Manosphere have seeped into the broader culture, infecting young men and teenage boys especially, as well as noxious public figures like Andrew Tate, and the focus of the blog has shifted accordingly.
I also write frequently about Donald Trump and his attempts to turn our flawed democracy into an authoritarian state, because that’s kind of the central issue of the day and I want to do what I can to fight against our rapid plunge into literal fascism.
Q) So Trump I can see. But what about this misogyny thing?
A) I write about 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 and a half. 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.
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 the Manosphere don’t simply embrace misogyny; they also proudly embrace “scientific” racism and other bigotries.
And then there are the incels. At this point, you probably know all about incels.
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 Chicago, IL, and the guy behind the viral hit blog Confused Cats Against Feminism. 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, via PayPal or Venmo. (You don’t have to have a PayPal account to use this method; a credit card will do.) There are no ads here, by choice. Individual donations are what keep this blog going.
Q) What’s with all the cat pictures?
A) I like cats.
Sorry, just jumping in here – I’m a linguist and this is bugging me. Your link is right but you lost one of the d’s, and no one else seems to have actually clicked it. My Brazilian friend taught me that word a long time ago so I actually noticed when you mistyped it (and then everyone else in the thread who never heard it before proceeded to do the same…), but the word is ‘saudade’, usually (from what I’ve seen of it in context) used in plural, ‘saudades’.
I found footage of goat-Cosette.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/weirdnewsvideo/11690078/Goat-beauty-contest-held-in-Lithuanian-village.html
Is that a sort of non-pornographic Rule 34? If it exists, someone has done in on the internet.
@kirbywrap
Omg, that was amazing. I was singing each line and making goat noises when appropriate. XD
@kirbywarp — Goat bless you. That was fabulous.
I love your Q&A responses! Thank you for not only posting the outrageous and sometimes abhorrent twisted views of misogynists and other ilk, but also the hilarity that ensues. The cats are awesome as well. Keep up the good work sir! Our world needs more like you! 🙂
Ah Ok, I get it now! (Doh). Brilliant 🙂
You could argue that feminism doesn’t help women. It encourages them to think of themselves as victims and stew in THEIR own bitterness.
You could argue that you have no idea what feminism is about, too.
You could argue that potatoes are culturally indoctrinated into stewing in their own bitterness, but why would you?
On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 10:14 AM, we hunted the mammoth wrote:
> Ohlmann commented: “You could argue that you have no idea what feminism is > about, too.”
At least they didn’t necro the glossary again. So progress?
Bitterness: code for “women no longer endure evil acts in complete silence, which forces the people who do the evil and those who are complicit to confront that evil is being done, which gives them negative feelings so they work super-hard to shove the women back into silence.”
Just so everyone is clear.
Awwww yiiiiissss I finally learned.
We absolutely adore this site and your work in journalism. We would love to do a podcast with you, then sample it in a song to push art to its limits! (The podcast will be edited to sound like it was recorded in a shower) 🙂
The site owner wanted to be able to change his site name, so he didn’t take the name he would get later, else changing from wehuntedthemammoth to wehuntedthemammoth isn’t actually a change.
@Eric
Because he wanted to highlight men whom he thought were being “boobs,” used to mean “a bumbling fool.” He later changed it because too many people thought it was weird and didn’t make sense.
Hi! I used to post on here regularly, but drifited away. Anyway I thought you might be interested in this article.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/proud-boys-are-at-war-with-their-proud-girls-female-extremist-wing
tf is this
I love everything about this site. The ugly beast of what I call 3rd wave misogyny pollutes the discourse about feminism and gender issues. It is difficult to have a decent discussion about these topics when one side is plagued by infantile “women bad” arguments. As a family law attorney, these despicable arguments make my job much more difficult and only increase the biases on both sides, resulting in already uphill battles only getting steeper. Thank you for the work you do.
One note. I do believe there is a decent amount of mischaracterization of the MGTOW movement throughout your site. MGTOW was bred out of a backlash against the incel/pickup artist toxic culture. MGTOW represents a “I have not found that I am personally compatible with this culture, so I will removed myself to prevent further trouble” attitude, which is essentially all you could ask for from someone who has tried and tried again. Yes, often on the internet there is a blurred line between “meninists” and MGTOW. Yes, there are many incels who post as MGTOW believers. Yes, MGTOW does seem to attract their share of woman haters. I think you can agree though that these are the vast minority and do not speak for our movement as a whole. I’m sure you would not use the same logic to describe a religion that has a handful of extremists.
I implore you to understand that MGTOW is at its core a self realization and actualization movement. It is a commitment to stop existing through the opposite sex’s lense and exist for yourself. Find your own footing, wants, and needs, apart from others’ desires. This is not unlike a popular tenant of feminism, where throwing off the shackles of the male “perfect female” ideal is championed. Yes, it is no secret that an incredible amount of privilege is required to even have the choice of “going your own way,” but that is no reason not to allow men that desire. To chastise men for wanting to live for the good of themselves is truly cruel and sexist.
Again, in practice there are some loud bad actors who sully the movement. There are bad actors who sully every movement. Do not judge the whole by the part, please. With my clients, MGTOW comes up frequently, believe it or not. I describe it as men who have realized that there is a problem, and they are fixing it. It is not resentment. It is not hate. It is not spite. It is a simple removal to stop further problems. I urge you to see it this way as well.
Again, I thank you for the work that you do. I consider myself a feminist and a member of the manosphere, and I think you would too if you had seen the things I have seen though the US justice system. When considered by someone who truly values gender equality, I believe the two ideologies coexist. I think you’d feel the same.
Thank you,
TT
@TT TT
Your glasses are exceptionally rosy. You haven’t been around that many MGTOW, have you?
@Makroth
forgive me I don’t know how to tag properly here.
I think a really useful tool when passing judgement or expressing prejudice about a certain group of people is to replace the group with another marginalized group and see if you sound like the “bad guys” so to say. We will start with an easy example.
Many lesbians openly admit to not wanting to interact with men anymore. The majority of their interactions with men have been so so so terrible that they no longer want to deal with the opposite sex. They dislike the opposite sex. And who can blame them! Many many men do terrible things, most of all to women. Women are completely within their right to resist these interactions. More power to them!
Yet, when a man wants the same he is chastised? Again, I would like to highlight that for a man it is significantly easier. Male privilege is very real and I would be daft to pretend it didn’t make MGTOW easier, but everyone has the unalienable right to choose the type of people they interact with. Please do not shame men for choosing the same .
Obviously, when you understand the Nazis’ ideals you will easily know they are the bad people. You do not need to be around Nazis to know they aren’t the good guys. It does not matter if you meet a good, well spoken nazi. It doesn’t matter if you meet a whole forum of nice, gentlemanly, kind Nazis. These Nazis do not represent the movement. At its core, Nazism is a terrible hateful movement. It does not matter who is representing the cause.
I hate to make this comparison, but I feel it is essential to show you, @Makroth, how your logic breaks down. I am in the profession of logical deduction and inference. It is my cause to show you how your assertion is not useful.
For the love of God, I think we all know that Islam is not all made up of extremists. I dated a Muslim for a bit over a year and can promise you she was not even close to an extremist. Yet, using your logic, you must unfortunately think that all muslims are terrorists. Is this correct @Makroth? Do you always describe the whole by the loud mouth, bad apples who do not truly capture the cause?
Obviously not! I should hope everyone who ends up on this website is a reasonable, careful person. I do not think you are anti-Islam, @Makroth, but you have got to see the bigger picture. All humans have a right to practice what they believe is right for them. It is difficult to resist the heavy yoke that society levies on men to find a wife and have a family. It is so hard for these clients of mine to see their whole life and family they’ve built running like sand through their fingers. MGTOW represents a path for men to take that doesn’t involve giving all of themselves to their significant other. Finally, I see these men relieved of the burden of trying to live to impress women and eventually making a family. They have been released from the pressure of the typical male path.
You would champion a woman learning to live outside of the male gaze. Please extend this to some of the most hurt, scorned, and down men in our world. They’ve already seen the cruelty of existence. You do not need to shame them for swallowing their pride, reaching out for support, and learning how to move on in life.
Thank you,
TT
Disingenuous. You might have a point if MGTOW were what it says on the tin, but you don’t actually “go your own way”. You’re a bunch of incels who eventually got a nasty case of sour grapes, spending all your time kvetching about women and stewing in misogyny online. For instance, you aren’t going your own way, but rather commenting on a woman-heavy feminist site to defend your fellow-travelers from being dissed.
@TT TT
Sounds nice. Can you point us to any websites where MGTOW don’t hate women? Please don’t send us to Youtube. I personally am not willing to sit through MGTOW videos.
The reason why MGTOW GTOW is because they want to control women. They think that if enough MGTOW pretend to be happy and totally not bitter at all, women will come back to them and grovel at their feet. Most women would have a more fulfuling relationship with a lamp post, so that’s not gonna happen, no matter how big their movement gets. The same cannot be said for lesbians. Or muslims. You could say that about quite a few nazis, though.