We Hunted The Mammoth
A little realization hit me while I was watching videos about #GamerGate recently. MRAs and #GamerGaters really seem to enjoy depicting themselves as cartoon villains. Above, the skull-in-a-Koolaid-pitcher mascot of MRA videoblogger Bane666au.
Below, a screencap from a video by Mundane Matt, one of the movers and shakers behind the whole #GamerGate thing.
On Friday, expat woman-hating woman-chaser Roosh Valizadeh put up a post on his Return of Kings blog with the sensationalized headline “Did Anita Sarkeesian Commit Felony Wire Fraud?”
Roosh breathlessly “reported” that
I found this “meme” on the A Voice for Men Forums, and it was too special not to share.
The AVFM “Graphics and Art” forum is kind of a gold mine for baffling and terrible “memes,” terribly drawn comics, and “graphics” that aren’t really graphics at all — like, for example, these graphically challenged entries:
There are a lot of good reasons why the words “creepy” and “expat” end up together so often. But sometimes the word “creepy” really isn’t strong enough.
Take the latest post on Random Xpat Rantings, the blog of an especially creepy 50-something expat living in Bali. “Xplat’s” posts are almost always skin-crawlingly awful, but he’s really outdone himself with a sexually explicit ode to cross-generational, er, “romance” titled “The value of being the center of religious devotion.”
He’s not big on self-awareness, this guy.
He starts off with this doozy:
Many people, men included, can’t seem to wrap their minds around why on earth a man would date a teenager 30 years younger than himself.
No, I think pretty much everyone knows why you’re “dating” a teenager – in a country with a per-capita income one-fifteenth that of the United States.
An 18 year old is capable of extreme crushes, and can be brought into a religious reverie of constant devotion towards her man.
Like I said, he’s not big on self-awareness.
Especially if she’s given regular doses of intense sex. Intense physically, erotically, emotionally, violently, romantically, exhibitionously, and any other ly. Just intense experience in which it feels as if you share the same emotional and physical worlds.
Exhibitionously? (Not a real word.) Violently?
After some vaguely Buddhist pseudo-profundities on the nature of “love,” he launches into a grotesque and explicit discussion of how the young woman he calls “N18” pleasures him sexually “with frenzied devotion.” We’ll just skip past that and move on to this:
I am the center of her world, and when we are together you will see her spend all her attention on trying to make me happy. I don’t dole out love constantly, but she relishes each burst of it, and patiently waits around for the next dose.
His hot-and-cold approach to doling out “love” is of course a classic abuser tactic.
This is not just a matter of blow jobs on command. This is loving devoted passionate blow jobs.
That’s why an older man would date an 18 year old. Because they make excellent devoted sex slaves.
I’m speechless.
Even after four years of writing about the “manosphere” I’m still amazed and appalled by the ways these guys manage to outdo themselves in awfullness.
“Surly Amy” Roth, a Los Angeles artist and writer for Skepchick, has created an art installation that attempts to capture and convey what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the relentless abuse she and too many other outspoken women face online.
With the help of members of the Los Angeles Women’s Atheist and Agnostic Group, Roth has built a small office-within-an-office inside the The Center For Inquiry-Los Angeles – and covered every surface with printouts of actual harassing messages sent to her and an assortment of other misogynist bete noires, including Rebecca Watson, Amanda Marcotte, Soraya Chemaly and Lindy West.
As she writes,
There is a false notion that online spaces are not real. That what happens online does not have an effect on the regular day-to-day life of people. As we have seen recently with the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence, high profile women are seen as mere objects and targets or play-things meant to be stolen, acquired and used- that if they can not handle these made up rules- that they should leave the internet and all forms of technology behind.
My art exhibit is meant to put you, the viewer, in their shoes if only for a moment. See what it is like to be obsessively judged based on “fuck-ability”, “rape-ability”, as an object, or alternatively as what seems to be a target in a socially accepted (or otherwise ignored) game of online stalking, harassment and silencing techniques.
The opening reception for “A Woman’s Room Online” is tonight, September 13th at 7pm at the Center for Inquiry in Los Angeles; the installation will remain up through Oct. 13th.
You can read more about it here.
A couple of years back. with the help of the commentariat here, I put together an MRA Bingo Card Generator. I’ve been meaning to do a new and improved version of this for a while — as well as a companion PUA/Red Pill Bingo Card Generator, and possibly even a couple of others (Derailing Bingo? Dark Enlightenment Bingo? GamerGate Bingo?).
I know some of you all have been playing Troll Bingo in the comments. So let me know which of these card generators sound like the most amusing to you. And then let’s brainstorm about what to put in the list for each!
Also, if you can come up a way to actually play MRA Bingo, let me know. Certainly in every big thread with trolls in it, commenters could print out cards for themselves and see how many squares they can fill. Or we could set a specific time, and one of us, acting as Bingo Boss, could send you all to a particular MRA post or discussion thread elsewhere and you all could compete to see who could get a bingo first.
I’m kind of thinking this could become a thing.
Anyway, let’s get brainstorming!
The ritual posting of animated cat gifs brings an end to the Third Quarter We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive.
Let me add my voice to the chorus of animated kitties: THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATIONS, whether they were big or small! They enable me to keep this blog going and to afford shoes for my kitties. Well, not the part about the shoes. I’m not sure why I said that.
In any case, once again I’m humbled that so many of you all think this blog is important enough (or at least entertaining enough) to support with your donations.
And that so many of you contribute your time and your talents to help out as well, whether you’re volunteering as a mod or drawing hilarious pictures or leaving sharp and funny and knowledgeable comments.
If you meant to donate bug haven’t gotten around to it yet, here’s that link again. (And don’t worry that the PalPal page says “Man Boobz.”)
And of course you can donate any time you want using the button in the sidebar.
Some folks have suggested that I set up a Patreon account as well; I will be looking into that.
Thanks again!
Oh, and one more gif. No, I’m not trying to hypnotize you.
Ok, maybe I’m trying to hypnotize you a little.
When I saw this quote from our old friend, A Voice For Men’s repeatedly-banned-from-Twitter Social Media Director Janet Bloomfield, it seemed to me to be so extravagantly confused that even the most confused cat against feminism would be embarrassed to have said it. So I made a new meme for it. Ta da!
Here’s the whole paragraph the quote comes from:
I am often accused of simply not understanding what feminism IS when I dare to criticize it, especially on Twitter. Get a dictionary, blah blah blah whatever. See, here’s the thing: I know exactly what feminism IS and the claim that feminists stand for gender equality is not only outright laughable, I’m beginning to see it as a calculated, deliberate, malicious lie. Feminists damn well know they are seeking superiority and the wholesale destruction of society as we know it to be replaced by a brutal matriarchy in which all women and the remaining men will be subject to totalitarian controls that would make Stalin green with envy.
Not all the remaining men! I have been assured I will be guaranteed a spot in Women’s Country with the other male servitors.
Anyhoo, if anyone else feels inspired to do any meme-ing, there are certainly any number of quotes about feminism from MRAs that might work well for similar graphics. No need to stick with cats. There are any number of animals that might better symbolize confused MRAs, from dung beetles to snakefish to bat guano. Ok, that last one isn’t strictly speaking an animal, but you get the idea.
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
If you hope to make it through the day without losing all hope in humanity, you may not wish to read the following thoughts on Ray and Janay Rice from our old friend from The Spearhead, W.F. Price.
I know people instinctively and reflexively sympathize with the victim of a brutal attack, but …
Yeah, I’m giving you all one more chance to back out of this right now, because we all know that nothing good is going to come after that “but.”
[CORRECTION: See the section on sockpuppeting for a correction.]
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
If you’re looking for evidence of just how carefully – and how duplicitously – the campaign of vilification and harassment now known as #GamerGate was planned, from the very beginning, there’s perhaps no better place to find it than in the chat log from the IRC channel #burgersandfries.
The channel, launched when the Zoe Quinn “scandal” first erupted in August, has served as a virtual meeting place for hundreds of 4channers trying to dig up dirt on Quinn and her supporters and spread this information/disinformation as widely as possible.
On Monday, I wrote a long post documenting a tiny portion of the misogynistic hate towards Quinn that fills the log, an almost bewilderingly enormous document of 3756 pages, in 10-point type, of overlapping IRC conversations. It will take me several more posts to even begin to report on all the nastiness that can be found inside.
Today I would like to focus on some of the dirty tricks that 4channers and others on the channel have been using in their attempts to ruin the life and careers of Quinn and her supporters, tricks that were discussed surprisingly openly.
The tricks I’ll focus on today are spamming, doxxing, and sockpuppeting – including impersonating women/people of color in order to make the #GamerGate movement seem less obviously a white male-dominated reaction to outspoken women in video games.