I had an interesting conversation recently with a woman on Twitter who told me that my policy of letting MRAs and misogynists comment here, at least so long as they’re not abusive, was keeping her and others she knew from joining in the conversation; she wanted a place to discuss MRAs where she didn’t have to deal with them.
I know a lot of the regulars here like engaging with the trolls and MRAs who stop by, but I’d like to create some space here for commenters who want to discuss the issues in a Troll- and MRA-free zone.
So I thought I’d try starting a new kind of Open Thread: A No-Troll, No-MRA, No-Misogynist, No-Rape-Apologist, No-Douchebag Thread to discuss the issues I cover on the blog and anything related to that: Misogyny, MRAs, PUAs, MGTOW, the “Red Pill,” and so on. Enjoy!
Oh, and if a troll wanders in, or if someone starts being douchey, ignore them and send me a note. I’ll delete their comments and ban them. No warning, no moderation, straight ban.
I’m for it. Safer Spaces for the win.
Great idea, David.
I took the Red Pill and now Advil has taken my headache away.
Still, life’s going relatively decently. I picked up Mario Kart 8. Anyone else pick it up? I’m taitaisanchez on Nintendo Network.
I admit, I’m here partly FOR the troll-whacking, but I totally understand why others might not want that.
I like this idea a lot. It’ll be handy for posting links we find about other misogynist awfulness so we don’t derail comments on unrelated posts – something I do but feel a bit guilty about. You might even score some worthwhile leads from it, David.
I want to share this adorable video I recently found. I originally wanted to save it to use as brain bleach, but there’s nothing wrong with cuteness just for cuteness sake.
Hi. A long time ago – like maybe a year, David asked us about our experience with MRA’s and most of us hadn’t had any direct involvement with them.
Now I seem them all over the internet. Sites that allow comments always had sexist commenters, mostly of the old fashioned variety, but I can’t go to any mainstream news or current affairs sites now that don’t have MRA buzzwords and irrationalisms crawling all over the comment sections. Any time there is a news story on the Guardian that even tangentially touches on feminism, gender relations or sexual violence creates a comment thread that is 30% MRA bullshit and the rest people horrified by what they are saying.
And then my brother came out with few MRA buzzwords in actual real live speech- hypergamy was one. He isn’t an MRA in the slightest but just an ordinary person in their 20’s who unconsciously absorbs sexism when he can’t be bothered thinking through his ideas, He didn’t realise where those words come from, although he had vaguely heard of the MRA. It just seems to be some of the new ideas and vocab that is circulating around his mostly male friendgroup.
I dread the day when my father actually finds out how to use the internet, because the MRA will have him in a shot. A year ago I thought the chances he’d ever hear about them were pretty slim.
Safe threads is a great idea!
I still know not one single man away from the keyboard who uses MRA terminology; there are a few programmers I was kind of giving the side-eye to, just because they fit the demographic so perfectly, but I’ve since gotten to work more closely with them and can safely say they are okay dudes.
As a 39 year old woman who lives with a cat and a boyfriend, has never been married, and is profoundly happy- what is with the resurgence of the word “spinster”? Seriously? Are we bringing back Victorian insults?
I’m that guy from RationalWiki. (Regular contributor, Board of Trustees 2014 member – we’re a very small charity – I run the Twitter.) We’ve been increasing our manosphere coverage lately – e.g. Manosphere, which links to most of the MRA-related topics.) We have a pile of contributors working hard on gender issue stuff. We would GREATLY welcome your ideas, contributions and sensible critiques. (We get a ton of the less-sensible variety; I promise that if you are polite and sensible, we will do our best to respond sensibly. It’s not hard to be less rude than an MRA who thinks he’s being polite.) I am quite proud to be able to say that RationalWiki is one of the few skeptic spaces that isn’t actively hostile to people other than the pasty white nerdboy audience, and welcome your assistance in keeping up our mission to encourage coherent joined-up thinking in the world that people actually live in. Thank you 🙂
@taitaisanchez:
Sadly, I cannot afford a Wii U.
I am saving up to buy D&D Next instead.But I understand that it’s loads of fun and the most popular feature is the slow-motion replay camera. I suppose there’s some slight chance you’ve escaped noticing the Luigi Death Glare meme that blew up this week.I know that this forum is for MRA stuff, but since this thread was shared in response to an article about misogyny as it relates to the Elliot Roger’s shooting, and the MRA type people who I was dueling with in the comments section both shared it and supported it, I kind of want to hear what everyone else here thinks.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/jamie-varon/2014/05/sexual-assault-problem-nuanced/
It starts out reasonably enough, but it just gets worse as it goes. The writer is pretty out of touch with feminist issues.
Saltpickles
“Now I see them all over the internet”
http://imgace.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/idiots-everywhere.jpg
Every site about women I go to there are comments saying: ‘women do it too!’, ‘what about teh menz’, etc. Every. Single. Site. It’s SUPER annoying of course we care about teh menz and we know that women do it too! But stop derailing the conversation and making it about you. There other places to go to talk about your problems. Its also very insensitive that’s like telling a child who lost his parents: ‘Other kids lost their parents so you have no reason to cry.’
The Luigi Death Glare/Road Rage would be funnier if my shitty “BUT IM A NICE GUY” ex roommate didn’t cosplay as Luigi.
@davidgerard I’m glad to hear it about RatWiki. I used to edit there (under a different name) and was never really satisfied with the state of the MRA article. I think the issue at the time (this was about a year and a half ago or so, I’m not sure if it’s changed since then) was that the article was WAY to focused on their “platforms” (circumcision is bad! Men should be able to get custody of children too!*) and so ended up treating it as a far more legitimate ideology than it really is.
I think (once again, referring to the state of the article in January 2013) the article could be considerably more snarky and would do better pulling more quotes from the MRAs themselves instead of position statements.
*I live in a state where it was actually illegal for widowers to maintain custody of their children. It took a Supreme Court case to deal with that. Now I have a family member fighting with an abusive ex for custody, and it seems that the state has overcorrected itself considering how much success he’s having despite his obvious lack of desire to even try to provide a safe environment or even expend minimal effort in parenting.
http://youtu.be/DlAKU39Fc90
Reblogged this on fatherteresablog.
Auggziliary
Lol they’re so funny when they run and dat pretty music
@maistrechat We hope not to suck. (Of course we suck. It’s a wiki, it’s on the internet, it’s loaded with idiots.) I think the MRA stuff has improved tremendously, in both accuracy and range. The MRAs showing up on the talk pages (every. bloody. day.) have actually helped sharpen it. We do what we can, in a slow infuriating wiki-not-actually-run-by-anyone sort of way. Our gracious host continues to provide top-quality reference material of course. We probably do a terrible job, but we try our best! Mostly. When we remember.
It seems that I’m not the only one who’s been noticing *WAY* more MRAsshat commenting online. Anyone else getting scared here? Does anyone even know how many of these guys there are out there? Are they gaining ground, or are they just an extremely vocal, obnoxious minority?
@unicrone: I kind of like the word spinster for describing myself. Single woman, over 35, with a beloved cat and a love for anachronism. I know it’s meant to be an insult, but I’m thinking of queering up and reclaiming the word “spinster”. Oooh, I can just see a badass tat of a spiked black spinning wheel… XD
@Winter Walker: They’re still a bit of a “fringe” group I suppose, but there are many of them.
I am not sure if you have heard of the author Michael Kimmel, but, he has a really great book called “Angry White Men: American Masculinity At The End of an Era”. In the book he specifically discusses the ONLINE MRA movement/trend in great detail….he talks about the type of men that seem to be inclined to participate in the movement, a lot of the myths or lies MRA’s like to spread online, etc. He also has various other chapters in the book in regards to rampage school shooters, physical/sexual violence against women AND men, etc. It was a very interesting read, and has given me a lot of the answers I was hoping to find.
The amusing thing about the book is…MRA’s really hate it haha. I’v seen Paul Elam and others complaining and ranting about the book in the manosphere.
http://www.amazon.ca/Angry-White-Men-American-Masculinity/dp/1568586965
Winter Walker, It’s hard to judge whether it’s become worse. It seems like there was a perfect storm a couple of years ago with Steubenville, Maryville, the birth of Slutwalk, and related events that unleashed a misogynist backlash that is only getting worse.
I try not to think about how widespread it is. I hope what I see online is a small subset of the population that takes advantage of anonymity to express their rage. As with other forms of hatred, it bothers me a great deal that bigots can promote hate, threaten, and harass with impunity. This is probably a minority viewpoint but I believe there should be stricter limits on hate speech.
Winter Walker- I also like the idea of reclaiming the word “spinster”- I sort of want to create a t-shirt with a picture of an awesome female dj with a cat on her shoulder, spinning records with the word “spinster” on it.
I only stumbled upon this site a few days ago and wanted to know how much harassment women face on a daily basis? I listened to the radio show that was posted a few days ago and a lady on it said that woman often try to spend the shortest time possible getting between locations because of the amount of harassment faced by men. Is it something that happens everyday, week or month? I have heard stories from women I know but I thought it was a rare/ freak occurrence not a regular thing.
This is random but I just found this it’s called: ‘feminism is bullshit’ on tumblr and it’s pretty more hateful garbage.
However I do find a few things quite hilarious like this line for the site:
‘A blog about one man’s quest to stop the evils of feminism’
http://youtu.be/E5j4DIellR4