So yesterday, I appeared (albeit very briefly) on TheStream on Al Jazeera English along with Helen Lewis of the New Statesman, social media researcher Alice Marwick, Skepchick blogger Rebecca Watson, and others. The topic: online misogyny and harassment of women. No sooner had the show ended than I ran across two perfect examples of precisely the sort of misogynistic harassment we’d just been talking about, courtesy of Reddit and Roosh.
First, Reddit. On Monday, Forbes columnist Kashmir Hill – female, beep boop! – wrote a piece mocking the notion (apparently widespread in some circles) that in these hyper-connected days people without Facebook accounts are a bit suspect. But part way along towards making her point she committed the terrible error of making the following not-to-be-taken-literally remark:
We’re “addicted” to our iPhones, and Facebook, and Twitter, and Android, and Pinterest, and iPads, and Word with Friends, and fill-in-the-blank-with-your-digital-dope-of-choice.
Not literally true, or meant to be taken as such, but a fairly commonplace observation.
Yet it managed to enrage one dude in a Reddit discussion of her piece, who offered this response (which I am hoping is also not to be taken literally):
To the writer: I’m not addicted to any of that, you stupid cunt.
Damn, this “article” is so full shit I’m seriously considering becoming a mass murderer.
This being Reddit, his comment got, last I checked, ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIVE upvotes, and 727 downvotes, for a net score of 1071.
Never mind that the Forbes writer put “addiction” in ironic quotes. Never mind that she was suggesting it’s a bad idea to assume that anyone without a Facebook account is a psychopath.
None of that matters, because a dude on Reddit who obviously only skimmed the first paragraph of her piece decided she needed to be taken down a peg.
HOW DARE SHE MENTION PINTEREST I’M NOT ADDICTED TO THAT SHIT I ONLY SPEND MOST OF MY LIFE ON REDDIT POSTING DOZENS OF COMMENTS A DAY.
(Which the guy actually does, by the way.)
I doubt that many of the upvoters really had much of an opinion of the issues at hand; they were, I imagine, just happy for the chance to upvote some dude calling a woman on the internet a cunt.
Meanwhile, over on Blag Hag, skeptic blogger Jen McCreight found herself the target of a fellow we here at Man Boobz have been coming to know quite well: Roosh “When No Means Yes” Valizadeh, the, er, dating guru. McCreight, you see, recently took aim at a post of Roosh’s that argued, with the help of a little homemade chart, that educated women are “boner killers.”
His response to her takedown? A tweet with her picture attached to it and the question “would you date this girl?”
Naturally, that was all it took to unleash a this torrent of tweets from Roosh’s fans:
Other dudes popped into her comments section and offered more detailed assessments of what they saw as her deficiencies in the boner-inducing department. According to a fellow called Karl:
Your overall level of physical attractiveness (negative 10, if your photo is anything to go by) is enough to keep self-respecting, non-totally-desperate men away from you. Misogynistic or not. Your level of education has nothing to do with it.
Happily, McCreight has thick skin, and doesn’t particularly care that men she finds repugnant aren’t interested in dating her. But not everyone does.
As harassment goes, these aren’t even particularly egregious examples. This is just the sort of stuff that happens every single day to women on the internet who have the temerity to say things that some dude, or some dudes, don’t much like.
Ironically, I wrote about the same Roosh post more than a year ago. Yet none of his fans showed up in the comments here to tell me they wouldn’t date me.
Oh, sure, I get lots of shit from the MRAs of the world. Heck, after hearing about my Al Jazeera appearance, our old friend ThePigman had this to say about me on Reddit yesterday:
For the sake of those who will be watching i really hope Dave wears both his paper bag and a girdle.
But the thing is, I’ve written literally 800 posts about misogynist assholes like ThePigman and Roosh, and the worst thing they can think to say about me (aside from pointing out my weight) is that I’m a not a real man – that I’m a “mangina,” a “dickless wonder,” “such a girl,” “Little Ms. David.” (Those last three quotes are from some of the first truly nasty comments I got back on this blog shortly after starting it in 2010. ThePigman, with his talk of girdles, continues on in this fine tradition.)
As the case of Forbes’ Kashmir Hill and her Reddit detractors above makes clear, women can get even more violent responses after writing only a single sentence that somehow, even due to a gross misreading, pisses off some dude on the internet.
Falconer: Or they pretend to tell us what it’s like in other countries, as if 1: we are all USians, and 2: none of us USians has ever travelled.
@Pecunium: Yeah. I hope I didn’t step on anyone’s toes in the last couple of days when that guy who said he was from the UK came over here talking about what we USians needed to do, and then amply demonstrated that he didn’t understand the nuances of US politics and got angry when we schooled him on dog whistles.
@Shaenon
Watched the pilot episode of “Girls”. It was pretty good, for what it was, but…well, it’s like many other TV shows about “real” people (who are mostly, if not entirely, white), in that while there are some quirks and dismantling of stereotypes, it’s not exactly revolutionary.
With that said, there are some disturbing elements, like the main character’s boyfriend and their sexual encounter (at least from the pilot). For some reason, it seemed off to me, and even the main character felt that something was wrong. Not to mention the whole “post-college” thing that the main character goes through, leaving her unemployable and struggling.
Again, Pilot Episode Impressions, nothing more. I’ve yet to go through the rest of the season, because LIFE (also, no HBO at my house).
And yet they are shocked….simply SHOCKED that some women out there have less than stellar views of men. Or that some women feel afraid or nervous around men they don’t know well. I’m not saying that that is right, but neither is calling a woman a cunt for daring to suggest that a lot of people might enjoy social media a little too much.
Two things continuously baffle me. One is the insistence on the part of MRAs/PUAs that any woman who objects to their statements must be ugly, or possibly unable to ‘get a man’. Yet it is obvious that they don’t only dislike (or disdain, if you prefer) unattractive women, but also attractive ones. Do they assume that if you’re hot, you don’t want/ need basic rights? Does it cancel out everything else? Yes, occasionally I see this tactic employed by the ‘other side’ as well, which I believe is equally stupid. The two most misogynist men I’ve met in real life were both good-looking, sucessful and charming men (one was a professor, the other a policeman*). They got a lot of sex, but still looked down on all women. The speculation that MRAs are all ‘losers in their basements’ probably (unfortunately?) isn’t true.
The second thing that amazes me is that so many PUA types specifically hate American women and consider them to be more ‘feminist’ than other women, as well as less attractive. Having lived in both Europe and the US, I find that in general (just speaking in generalities here) European women are less worried about what men think of them, and less worried about being seen as ‘slutty’. The laws in many European countries are also slightly more skewed towards women.
Dammit, I told myself I wouldn’t post on here anymore.
*which, considering his lovely views on the subject of rape, is not something I like to think about too much
As for ‘Girls’ I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Susan Walsh and Roissy love it because supposedly it honestly portrays women for what they truly are: bad boy chasing dumb sluts. Any show endorsed by those 2 assholes I would give the side eye.
given the known stupidity of walsh and roissy and their talent for twisting anything they want into evidence for their views, is that a particularly reliable analysis tho?
@Quackers: From what I’ve seen, Walsh and Roissy must have super-strong tunnel vision, because not all of the characters in ‘Girls’ are after boys. Each has a personality, and yes, there is sex, but that isn’t a sole motivation, it’s just…another activity, done with someone they like (even though there are icky things about the main’s relationship, at least from what I’ve seen. The whole thing is pretty awkward, and the sex sequence made me cringe a little because of how it was carried out by the boyfriend).
But like I said, only saw the Pilot. Maybe it does get worse and maybe it is hate-wank material for Roissy and his ilk, but I guess I need to confirm that for sure before sticking solely to Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire.
Yeah, it doesn’t even make sense for them to insult women’s looks and then declare that makes them wrong. Okay, so what if I look like a monster from Star Wars? Does that mean that everything I say is wrong, even when I say an objective fact like “Eleven is a prime number”? If a supermodel says that women are not people, that automatically makes it true? Facts and truth are not beauty pageants.
I found “Girls” to be a thoroughly obnoxious show, but that had more to do with the super white casting than anything. I was also bothered by the creepy dynamic between the main character and the dude she’s seeing; the show kind of recognizes that he’s manipulative, but (at least four episodes in) it seemed to be playing that for laughs, which is… yeah.
Oh, and the main character made a rape joke in one episode and an ableist joke in another, which made it hard to like her, for me.
OH, and there was one episode with some kinda weird gay-bashing vibes.
Anyway, point is, there are a lot of things to dislike about “Girls.” The fact that it has a primarily female cast is not one of them.
@Shaenon, I absolutely hated that trend of using Sex and the City plots to analyze actual women. What if you don’t have HBO and have never seen the show? How are you supposed to know how to act? Ditto Girls. They’re not documentaries, dumbasses.
@Sharculese
Yeah that’s true. I suppose the endorsement just causes a kneejerk reaction in me. I could check it out for myself but I don’t care enough and would rather watch The Avengers cartoon lol.
@redlocker
It sounds like one of those shows that tries to portray human awkwardness but just fails. Anyway why would I want to watch a show about women in the post college limbo when I’m living that life myself? (but with less sex and no relationship drama) I also heard about the fact that it was an all white cast which is pretty fail.
YEP. I’m always baffled by Tom, who calls all women wh*res (sorry, 97%) and then claims women are more misandric than men are misogynist. I’m always like, dude, a) you’re projecting, b) of course women hate YOU because you are a douchebag who calls all women wh*res
ostara: No… Women hate Tom because he tells the truth about them, and they don’t like it.
He doesn’t hate women…. just the whorish ones who won’t pay him for all he’s done for them.
What is so weird is that Jen from BlagHag got attacked by someone on scienceblogs awhile back for being too attractive (suggesting that she got special favors in college as a result).
@skeptifem: I’m actually going to reach back to Jesus Christ of Nazareth on that one. He said, and I quote, “so, my cousin John came along, and he didn’t drink a drop of alcohol, and he was always fasting. And you called him crazy! And I came along and drank wine with my dinner, and you called me a gluttonous drunkard!”
It doesn’t matter what you do; they will call you whatever name they think they can get away with calling you, because it’s not about the accuracy of their arguments. The very same guys who will dismiss her as ugly will dismiss her for being too attractive.
Hey, guys? Jesus has your number. And so do we.
LOL. Right, what an ungrateful wh*re I am for not genuflecting before Tom for all that he’s done for me… which is… precisely nothing.
..for all that he’s done for me… which is… precisely nothing.
That’s not true! He’s gave us the gift of “hard chairs are misandry”. 😛 Granted, that’s about it.
@Quakers: Yeah, that’s the thing…for all of the acclaim about the show portraying “real” people, it not only displays only one type of people (white folks), but even with it’s portrayal, it seems to have…tunnel vision. It’s almost like one of those existential books that claims to be about what real life is like…only one realizes that the reach of the author is extremely limited and only speaks about their life at best.
@Gametime: Wow, really? Damn. Glad I’m not the only one noticing the off-putting things about the main’s boyfriend.
He’s gave.. – Me
I could not be more disappointed with myself… *cries in a corner*
I guess Rouche knows he can’t defend his position, so he immediately goes straight for the ad hominem, calling her looks into question and baiting his syncophant attack dogs to do his dirty work.
I could barely make it through that Esquire article. The author’s evidence of female contempt of men is Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are dumb and Michelle Obama says her husband is just a man.
He also states “In parts of the United States, rapes have declined to such a low number that they can’t be charted.” What parts would that be? What do you bet it’s in parts with extremely low population density?
I know that my personal observations don’t count for much, but pretty much every woman I know has suffered at the very least ongoing sexual harassment in public, online and in the company of “friends”.
More than 90% have experienced physical molestation of varying intensity, from ongoing unwanted touching from someone they know well or being groped by a stranger in public or at a party.
And sadly, many have been raped, sometimes once and sometimes on an ongoing basis by an abusive partner.
So when MRAs say blatantly horrible, rapey things and it upsets people, it simply boggles my mind that their go-to response is to either deem us unrapeable (like that is the only way a woman can escape rape and abuse) or to start up the concentration camp fantasies where hot women are treated like fuckpets until they get worn out and the rest of us can legally be hunted down and murdered like prey or simply processed in death camps.
And they accuse US of being intolerant.
*DYING* He had to make sure that Roosh knew that he was surrounded by hot women lolll PUAz4life!
There’s also the third, slightly less used, but still seemingly popular “I hope you get raped” or “you deserve(d) to get raped, you ___insert whatever insult they feel is worse at the time___”. I find it pretty ridiculous when those kinds of comments crop up in response to things like women talking about their perceived safety – stuff like Schroedinger’s Rapist, etc.
It’s like, hey, if you’re pissed off that a lot of women fear for their safety on a regular basis, maybe, yanno, making thinly veiled threats isn’t the best way to make them stop fearing for their safety?
They’re not angry about women fearing for their safety; they’re angry that women speak up about it and try to make it change.