I spend more time on YouTube than I probably should. Most of the time I’m on the site, I’m tracking down strange and awesome music videos. But I also love cat videos (big surprise), ridiculous fake alien and UFO videos, videos of people behaving in incredibly unwise ways that are somehow not lethal to them, and pretty much anything that’s got Yackety Sax as its soundtrack.
What do MRAs enjoy watching? As far as I can tell, when they’re not watching videos of other MRAs, or flooding the comments of feminist videos, they like watching videos of women getting punched.
How else to explain the hundred-plus upvotes that greeted this brief video – it’s all of 15 seconds long –of a man knocking out a woman who was assaulting him. The video starts with a fight already in progress, as a woman rains blows on a much larger man backed up against a wall at what seems to be a strip mall while her friends shriek in the background. The man, after fending off a number of punches, hits her directly in the face and she drops to the ground.
That’s it. That’s all we know. We don’t know who these people are, what the fight was about, or even who started it.
But to the denizens of the Men’s Rights subreddit, this is a man who is fully justified in using violence against a woman, and they can barely conceal their excitement, posting dozens of comments proclaiming him a sort of Men’s Rights hero.
“Kudos to the guy who stood up to this bullshit,” dalsgaard declares, in a comment that gets dozens of upvotes. “I hope other men will take his example.”
Tim8080 only wishes he’d been there to take part in the punching:
Actually, the man in question isn’t particularly old, and he’s certainly not frail; he’s actually rather large and imposing.
Gus2144 thinks that for some reason gender equality necessarily involves a lot of hitting:
Evidently in that last comment Gus took it a little too far for his Men’s Rights bretheren, and he garnered himself a few downvotes.
But the serious downvoting in the thread was reserved for those who questioned whether or not MRAs should be celebrating the incident captured on video as a grand victory for Men’s Rights.
Indeed, CapnDancyPants won himself more than two dozen downvotes for simply wondering what might have happened before the fifteen seconds shown on the video:
MRAs: If they can’t punch women, they don’t want to be a part of your revolution.
@Tulgey Logger
I believe Maggie and her husband are just separated. (That is why some assholes say she deserved it for having an affair.)
You can’t win with misogynists.
Oy, that was nasty … anxiety attack at work. 🙁
@The Kittehs’
I am so sorry. Would you like to talk about it? (That’s about all I can offer from this side of the internet. Feel free to completely ignore me if that helps more. 🙂 )
I can also give you a little wobbly explorer.
One of my mom’s exes complained that she gave her kids too much attention and didn’t leave enough for him. Luckily, this raised red flags for mom.
@The Kittehs’ Unpaid Help I offer you internet hugs if you want them. I just had an attack of my own earlier today. I’m new to anxiety attacks, and it turns out they aren’t fun. 🙁
Squeee!
Mads must have looked like that at that age.
It’s tension triggered by loud music coming into my house – or rather, it’s gone way beyond that to just thinking about it at times, because mostly I can block that sort of stuff with earplugs. On Saturday it was loud enough that I couldn’t, and I asked the neighbour (whom I’ve never had a cross word with in seven years) if she’d turn it down just a little. She started ranting about how she was working (gardening) not “dancing around like some silly bitch” (???) and “he’d already had a go at me about it” – pointing to another house. (Thinks: Good on you, other person.) She did then admit she was feeling sick and cranky, and I was saying I hadn’t come over to have a go at her, just to ask her to turn it down a LITTLE so it wasn’t coming into my house. Got to love the way the “I’ll do what I want in my house” types invariably ignore that they’re making things unpleasant/distressing for other people in their homes.
Anyways I’m not really expecting anything further from this, but thinking about it ramped up my tension, all dry mouth and tight stomach. Been trying breathing exercises but it’s going to take some doing to bring it all down again.
One thing I’m kind of hoping is that the blood test I had done on Saturday shows I am anemic, or something. Anemia + perimenopause can push up anxiety, and it would be nice to have a physical cause (or part cause, rather) to be able to treat simply, and not just have to rely on the slow process of CBT.
/me derail
Hugs back, augochlorella!
Mine are pretty mild on the scale, except for once, and no, they’re not fun at all.
Your neighbor’s music is loud enough that it seeps into other people’s houses? What could she possibly need music that loud for?
Also I wish you the best of luck in finding a good treatment.
I’ve had neighbours much worse than her, too; it’s been much better where I live now than in my old place.
Best of luck with your treatment, too!
@The Kittehs’
Agreed on the physical cause, at the very least it feels like you are doing more and it is nice that it isn’t “all in your head” (at least for me). It shouldn’t matter, and I know it is just fucked up societal attitudes about mental health, but it still feels different.
I got a beta blocker from my psych that helps me a lot because it slows my heart rate and makes my body feel calmer even when my mind isn’t and having a lower heart rate makes it easier to breathe slowly and calmly. My doc implied they were pretty safe, so maybe that it something to talk to your doctor about? The only side effect I was told to watch out for was light-headedness and I don’t even get that. The boyfriend’s mother takes exactly the same drug for a heart condition, which was kinda fun to find out.
CBT is pretty great though it does take time. I had to figure out a lot of those skills on my own (the very few therapists I saw as a kid were worse than useless) and so I have all these basically the same (to my mind at least) techniques, but they are different enough that some therapists really don’t like them. But they work and I think that matters the most.
It is really horrible when other people intrude on your home. We had upstairs neighbors that used to sound like they were building a new apartment inside of the old one! It was hard not to always be on-edge either because of the noise or because we were waiting for the noise. Luckily, they neither moved or got quieter.
Hugs if you want them and I hope your neighbor reacts better if you ever need to talk to her again. Maybe if more neighbors eventually head over, she’ll figure it out for herself? It is awful that you need earplugs in your own home!
If they put it the other way around – If you want to punch people, be willing/able to take a punch – then it would at least be logical. I don’t think it’s right for anyone to want to punch someone, but at least it leaves the people who would rather not punch or be punched out of it.
@Kim
But then they would have to say they could take a punch/would be willing to as individuals instead of just belonging to the men-group who, by virtue of their virile masculinity, are all able and willing to take punches.
Hugs Kittehs’ if they’re wanted. I am lucky to have pretty quiet neighbors… Now I fear that merely saying that will bring a horde of Zepplin-playing frat boys into my vicinity!
Cooking question: I’ve jumped on the kale bandwagon, and de-ribbed a metric shit-ton of it this evening. Can you do anything with the ribs? Stock? I don’t want to just throw them away.
Sorry Kitteh, I used to have anxiety attacks a lot, about four years ago. I almost had one last week, but it stopped before it got worse. For some reason, any light is too bright right before it happens, all noises are too loud.
I’ve only read page one here but the rage at the spearhead needs venting before I explode from the stupid. How the fuck can he comment on how the kids’ father spent his pay on the TV, featured prominently in one photograph…in those words…while that piece of shit is raging in front of said TV? Not that it really matters, but that’s a friend’s house right? But hey, let’s assume her kids’ father paid for it so we can ignore the terrifying display of rage that the photograph is actually focusing on.
I’d seen the photos already and thought it couldn’t get worse, was thrilled she actually left him, probably won’t gt back together with him, has family who supports her, etc — and then the goddamned spearhead got to it.
Ok, now to finish reading the comments here, hopefully page two has more Maru!
And I broke the thread >.<
To everyone with loud neighbors and/or anxiety problems: good luck!
Figures the spearhead would 1) give a shit how old she was when she had the kids and 2) fuck up the math. I know I’ve said this before, but the MRM is pro pulsates by people who’re allergic to math.
I’m not sure why the age she had kids is an issue. I guess the logic is that young “sluts” are worse than older “sluts.” It contradicts everything else those guys say about women, but there ya go.
One comment, just one, starts well: “Good God, that picture of that tiny girl screaming because her mother’s being beaten is horrible” and then does this “…she’s a damned fool to expose her kids to that.”
In comparison though, that’s still not so bad, standard fare victim blaming, but the reply to it?
“That dirty dog was not being beaten but being serviced in the very manner she herself demanded to be serviced in, to satisfy her natural perverse tendencies … And it is a service language very commonly well understood and very commonly well demanded by the female of the gender, but only denied for civil appearances and false presentation purposes.
YOU can’t civilize this filthy mess, so stop the attempted placing of responsibility for it on others.”
I really wish I hadn’t finished the whiskey last night.
OMG that is terrible.
[express mails half of whiskey to Argenti — need to keep some for myself]
*downs a couple shots in short order* can I interest you in some dark chocolate in exchange?
Those spearhead comments are just horrible. I’d say vile but Steele/Mr. Al made that too funny. I really need to stop reading comments. Y’all have seen about the little trans* girl being denied access to the girls bathroom? The comments on that, even on supposedly decent places like the fucking Time website…and then I read the spearhead…
I’ll give them one thing, there are some people you just can’t civilize. They might to go find mirrors to figure out who.
I read a comment on the trans girl that was like “maybe he is only pretending to be trans”. I was so irritated because they were pretending that a child would try to what?
She is a little girl. She wants to use the bathroom like other little girls chill out.
I wonder if they are going to give her the injections to delay puberty in order to give her time and her parents time to make decisions regarding what steps they want to take. I’m not super informed on the injections, but her parents seem like the type that will be supportive. I’m sure they will make the right choices.
My ability to type coherent sentences has gone down today for some reason.
Ugh ugh ugh. That story is really heartbreaking.
Wtf is wrong with the world when I think that the comment melody mentions is moderate?! I was seeing more like:
“Excuse me, I’m confused. How does a 6-year-old get to be “transgender”? This child doesn’t yet know about the differences between boys and girls, let alone know that he identifies with one or the other. This doesn’t sound like discrimination, it sounds like child abuse.”
“Wow 5 and 6 year old’s know what the definition of transgender is? Sounds more like the parents are the ones transgendering their child. Must of wanted a girl pretty bad to subject their own child to this. bottom line if you have a penis then your a boy, and you should pee in the boy’s room.”
“You mean HE did it HIMSELF. Please use the proper pronouns. He’s a boy.”
“You mean SHE did it HERSELF. Please use the proper pronouns. She’s a girl.”
I’ll be happy when that, the two comments above this, never happens. Admittedly the longer the articles stay up, the more the top comments are “she’s 6, who cares which bathroom she uses?” (Just ftr, she’s also frikken adorable)
And this is why I was a theatre kid, no one gave a single fuck, so long as you didn’t either screw up the set, or do anything dangerously stupid (oh hai, there a safeties on table saws for a reason!)…I’m probably the only person on the planet who misses high school because I didn’t have to be closeted. Ah liberal New England, where you get enough shit for being goth that being the androgynous bisexual in charge of the gay straight alliance barely registers on the bullying radar. (Mocking my fashion choices or sanity where far more acceptable with the teachers, it’s a weird twist to making GLBT bullying extra bad…makes non-GLBT bullying less bad in comparison) …also I just don’t a give a shit if you refer to me by my bio-gender or not, attempting to mock me by using the binary opposite of my biology does everything but piss me off…
In short, just let her use the damned girls bathroom, and someone steer her towards music, art and theatre. Then again…can I dream that in 10 years time, when she’s in high school, we’ll be past transphobia enough that she can do whatever the fuck she likes and not get shit for it?
I’m babbling, sorry.
Oh and idk if she and her parents have a plan yet on the injections, but they are basically just puberty delaying — you can always just stop taking them and go through the puberty your biology is going to do. So they’re basically a low risk, reversible, way to stall puberty until the child is old enough to legally consent to irreversible surgery.
They sound lovely to me, but idk, I wouldn’t have done it because I associated puberty with being an adult and thus finally getting a damned say in things. No more “the adults are talking” (I wasn’t very bright at 11, and yes I was that young)…we could try just fucking up childhood sex ed less.
In b4 trolls call me a pedo for wanting to teach kids about sex (puberty and gender and orientation and the meaning of adulthood, but hey, I said sex ed!)
Some folks are saying BIOLOGY! BOY!
I’m just going to say biology is a lot more confusing than folks like to pretend. Chromosomes aren’t a guarantee: some folks have 3 instead of 2. Some folks have both ovaries and testes. No joke. It is just complicated.
Anyhow, sex and gender are different topics.
I really am struggling to make my brain churn out full sentences. I wonder why.