On a fairly regular basis, Man Boobz is visited by commenters of an MRAish disposition. There are many varieties. Some start off by trying to post rape threats and other such unpleasantness, and their comments never see the light of day. Some leave a few irritated comments and head off, never to be seen again. Some manage to stick around long enough to become Man Boobz institutions.
One interesting variety: the ones who come here, they claim, to discuss the issues with us in good faith. In most cases it becomes quickly evident that they are not interested in real discussion at all, as they ignore what most of the commenters here say to them to instead argue with the straw feminists who live in their heads.
Soon many of these alleged good-faith arguers drop the pretense entirely and lash out with nasty personal attacks. At this point they go on moderation, or find themselves banned entirely.
The latest such meltdown was a fairly quick one. For those who don’t regularly read the comments, here’s a brief history of John Anderson’s brief career (so far) as an unofficial goodwill ambassador to Man Boobz from planet Good Men Project.
An anti-feminist dude who generally hangs out at the Good Men Project, Mr. Anderson arrived at Man Boobz Prime on July 2nd, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, eager to learn from and about the feminist commenters here, and to convince some of us to join him and the other commenters at the GMP in healthy and fruitful dialogue.
In one of his first comments here, he explained the reason for his coming here:
I promised some feminists, who I really admire, at The Good Men Project that I would initially engage feminists without assuming that they are misandrist, a very difficult task for me at least. I think that I’ve mostly lived up to that promise so far as I’ve asked for clarifications and I’ve used qualifiers like seems. I can understand if this comment was written in frustration, but understand that I and any new visitor to the site won’t understand the back story if there is one and the comment just comes off as being dismissive of male victimization.
In a further comment he explained that he was trying to do his part to save the Men’s Rights movement from the angry ideologues:
I was on a voice for men a while back. They had nothing but contempt for the GMPers. I’m certain that I’ll cross paths with them. It is my heartfelt intent to reclaim my movement from people who would disgrace it.
Five minutes later, alas, we learned that he had determined we were all a bunch of misandrists after all.
I only promised not to assume that feminists were misandrists. Once proven, it is no longer an assumption.
Oh, wait, not all of us. But we are a bunch of meanies:
I don’t think all the commentators hate men or are necessarily closed minded to other view points. I actually stepped away from a safe space to engage people who don’t see things the way I do. The feeling that I get is that there is great hostility to anyone who may consider men to be victims under any circumstance….
I’ve quoted DOJ and CDC statistics and included page numbers or links on an article that says that we shouldn’t be angry over truthful statistics. I’ve been told that the statistics have been spun. Maybe I should have refrained from that SHOCKED bit. I probably should have considered the feelings of the people on this site. I’d consider apologizing, but too many people here seem mean.
As far as I can tell, he determined that I was a misandrist because I downplayed the fact that more men are murdered than women by writing the following sentence in the OP:
While four times as many men are murdered than women, only 5% of murdered men are killed by “intimates.”
I remain a bit baffled as to how a sentence that starts by noting that four times as many men are murdered than women is downplaying the fact that, well, four times as many men are murdered than women. You can go read the whole discussion yourself and see if you can figure it out.
The meltdown followed not long afterwards. In one comment, Mr. Anderson suggested, as far as I can figure it, that [TW: RAPE APOLOGETICS] women regularly decide whether or not to charge a man with rape after they determine how good their rapist is in bed:
When is a woman responsible for her own rape because it wasn’t worth fighting over? Maybe she liked it and waited to see how good he was before deciding on whether to fight and that whole women don’t report rape thing can’t be a big deal if she didn’t think it was important enough to report. Feminists say you should never blame the victim. What feminists mean is that you should never blame the victim unless the victim is a man.
But he still hoped to lure some of us over to the Good Man Project for more scintillating discussion about how feminists are evil and mean and how dudes like him think women think about rape. Oh, and that movie about the stripper dudes.
Come by and visit. Right now there are discussions focusing around the objectification of men because of the Magic Mike movie. There are also multiple discussions around men and feminism. Come and visit.
Then, for some reason, he decided to bring up his cock:
Kyrie says,
“Fuck. You.”
No thanks. Not sure if triple bagging it would help. I’m referring to both my cock and your face. I have to have some fun. 🙂
At this point, I put Mr. Anderson on permanent moderation.
Or tried to anyway. Due to a little glitch, it didn’t take, so Mr. Anderson was able to post freely for a while. Among other things, he tried to explain away that previous comment with this:
David says,
“And that line about cocks and faces wins Mr. Anderson the prize of permanent moderation. Congrats!”
You forgot bags. It’s bags, cocks, and faces. You have to admit, that statement was a classic.
Not so much.
Then he whined about being moderated:
Dude, I can’t even keep up with the comments directed at me. If I have to deal with moderation, the situation would be unworkable. It should earn me props on a voice for men when I decide to return at least until I start commenting on their discussions. It only took two or was it three days to get semi-banned from the site. Gotta be a record.
The only record set was for how quickly Mr. Anderson devolved from an earnest man of alleged good faith to a cock-talking troll.
Oh and also, BASTA!’s “(now plural) yours” is meant to note that ze’s using the plural form of you now, as opposed to you, personally.
Of course, last time I heard “you don’t think, that’s right!” was an ex’s grandfather was hanging up on me saying “sorry, I didn’t think you’d be asleep…” — while I was trying to call to say the ex had been arrested (for charges that didn’t stick, but nonetheless, he wasn’t too pleased have have spent the night in lock up because “you never think! *click*”)
So I’m biased here, but accusations that “I didn’t think…” means “I never think about anything” will not go over well with me.
@ Argenti
Since some of the things I write are intended for publication, assuming that people won’t notice or won’t care isn’t really an option. As much as it pains me to write “color” instead of “colour”, it has to be done.
“You may as well be telling us that the sky is pink.”
But it is! (Or was, after Irene, anyways)
Cassandra — colour would probably be noticed, outside legal/medical journals and the like, I would doubt many people actually know where punctuation is supposed to do (I’m not even sure, VoIP says inside the quotes, my english lit friend says outside unless it’s part of the quote). But yeah, sticking to what your boss says, or implies, is always a good idea if you want to keep the job.
They can pry theatre from my cold dead hands though (unless we mean movies, those can be theaters). That’s totally my own weirdness though. Lol, opinions needed! Is it therefor or therefore?
Like I said, I know that I have to use American spelling and grammer, but that doesn’t mean that I have to emjoy doing so.
Enjoy, dammit.
http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quotation.htm
One reason I got fired/quit (it was sort of more or less simultaneous) from a desk job was my resistance to their style book which went against all the English grammar and style rules I knew (had my master’s degree then). That’s when I learned that if your employer has a style book, and wants that followed, you gotta follow it. There were other reasons (but that one was actually listed in the official documentation, and I gotta admit, it was a fair one–their style book was shit).
Huh… didn’t see this of Skylar’s.
Two things.
1. You are saying that people are ignoring the logic and just making personal attacks. Then you say that this is what makes people think that using logic is abuse. Hopefully you can see what’s wrong here.
2. Logic as a form of abuse? Really? No. Abuse is when you pester someone who won’t do a thing you want them to do, and demand they give you an indisputable argument for why they have the opinion they do. Abuse is when you demand that, since they don’t have an argument that persuades you, they must do what you want them to do. Abuse is throwing a fit when the person doesn’t do what you want, since they didn’t have a sufficiently good reason (other than “I don’t want to,” which totally doesn’t count) therefore they must be not doing it to spite you.
Logic as abuse isn’t a problem; the problem is abuse disguised as logic.
“When it comes to commas and periods, though, logic doesn’t enter into the equation, at least not in the United States.”
It makes me feel better to know that I’m not the only person who thinks this.
Well thank goodness someone is making sense of the troll writing. All I could think was: “What the hell is your point?”
Well, that and I really want a yarn maker in harvest moon. Is it just me or is the game artificially slowed down? I have tons of money and resources, but I have to wait for Eileen to post a message. Arrgh!
Actually, there is no “logic” in language–i.e. the rules (and one has to distinguish between the prescriptive rules imposed by elites that marked the standard or received rules of writing (and this is all about writing) and the descriptive rules of languages studied by linguists who look at what the language users do when they speak, not what the standardizds rules say they OUGHT to do (the rule against using they in English for a singular antecedent, especially a hypothetical one is prescriptivist; from a descriptive point of view, English users been using they for singular antecedent all along).
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schlenker/ling1-ln-0.pdf
The punctuation “rules” are not only “illogical” but change over time, and as I noted above, different places will have different rule books–what is “correct” in one professional journal is not in another.
Plus, prescriptivist rules are heavily tied up with elites, morality, and a whole lot of shit that linguists have been trying to argue against for DECADES:
My favorite linguistics log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
See, I don’t know what Skylar was blithering on about with his close-mindedness, never-learn-anything thing. I learn new shit on this blog ALL THE TIME.
Hold on, wait: I thought Skylar was saying that feminists say that logic is a form of abuse, because women’s brains can’t handle it like men can and men win ALL THE ARGUMENTS. That’s why he linked “logic” to “statistics,” which that poor poor man was using earlier:
Also, I’m really not impressed by the Good Men Project. While the patriarchy does cause men suffering, discussing that while never doing anything to dismantle male privilege is worse than doing nothing, since it upholds structures of inequality.
I have discussed this at an MRA panel- it truly seems to infuriate many feminists that there exists a space for men to discuss men’s issues and men’s problems without bowing before female-centered “feminist theory”, and acknowledging their alleged role as the villainous oppressors and terrible privileged class.
Hey guys! Doing something about your problems is “female-centered ‘feminist theory'” and we’re all “villainous oppressors and [a] terribl[y] privileged class.” *cackles manically* I’ll villainously oppress you!! (This is just too stupid to take seriously)
@VoIP:
You seem to be right. Man… the worst type of unclear writing is the type that seems clear until you realize there’s a word missing or a word you missed that changes the meaning of the entire thing.
@Steele:
I know, man. Feminists really do seem peeved at the existence of locker rooms, board rooms, conferences, seminars, health clinics, poker tables, pubs, bowling allies, front yards, back yards, street corners, forums, blogs, chat rooms, reddit, movies, songs, spike tv, magazines, books, news papers, etc. etc. There’s precious few ways for a man and another man to communicate about how shit women are without feminists getting all huffy.
I do hope you didn’t spend the whole panel discussion talking about how feminists were so infuriated about the existence of a space for men to discuss men’s issues and problems. That would have been rather a waste of a space for men to discuss men’s issues and problems.
Steele.
So instead of looking at the current systems, a bunch of MRAs have decided to sit on their thumbs and whine about ebul femynysts. Gotcha.
You do realize that feminist theory isn’t the only way to look at systemic oppression or power structures right? That there are other areas of thought that if you looked at, you could in fact make significant changes that would benefit the lives of men? Like say capitalism. Or cost benefit analysis, and change it so that mens lives or well being were given greater weight. Or the medical institutions which are ignoring the need for men to have more options when it comes to their reproductive needs. Or working to educate the public in areas of abuse towards boys and men, how it happens, signs to watch for. Instead, sitting on the net whinging about women feeling entitled to use the services and rights we (and many men) fought for is the way to go?
didnt happen
In terms of the actual bad stuff that affects a lot of men, even some of the stuff that some MRAs focus on, there’s an already existing framework within which a lot of good can be done. It’s called socialism.
The snark on this blog tonight is totally getting to be OVER 9000 in epicness. Like, for serious, y’all- totally made my night for once, despite the trolls being idiotic and (poorly) attempting to gaslight us. 😀
Steele, are you a representative of the Good Men Project or do you just troll it frequently? Because if the first, the more you talk the less I respect its endeavors.
Steele wrote:
“I have discussed this at an MRA panel- it truly seems to infuriate many feminists that there exists a space for men to discuss men’s issues and men’s problems without bowing before female-centered “feminist theory””
No, what infuriates us is when MRAs talk about removing our right to vote. And beating us in the streets. And raping us. And how nothing we say, think, or feel is of any consequence. And how we are basically walking vaginas. And how all women are gold digging whores. So basically, misogyny.
As for discussing “men’s issues,” the only issue MRAs discuss with any regularity is how much women suck. If you were truly serious about helping men, we would support that.
I’ve seen this “whinging” word a lot here. Is it internet speak for “whining?”
Fembot — basically, yes.
It’s Brit-speak for whining.