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So in my last post I talked about a shocking whitewash of the manosphere from the official UK communications regulator Ofcom. The agency’s new report suggested that the dangers of the manosphere were vastly overrated, drastically downplayed the misogyny central to every manosphere subgroup, and informed its readers that many of the denizens of this poor maligned movement were actually upstanding young men with “a strong commitment to equal treatment and fairness.”
Which raises the question: What color is the sky on Ofcom’s planet?
But I didn’t have room in that post to get into one of the strangest things I discovered while researching the post: the reactions of some in the manosphere to the report, or at least to the weirdly uncritical reporting on it in The Guardian. I found threads on the subject on Incels.is and on the Men’s Rights subreddit, and, well, the boys weren’t exactly able to recognize the giant favor that Ofcom had done for them.
The incels, remarkably, responded more soberly to the report than the MRAs. One commenter reacted to the report’s conclusion that the dangers of the manosphere were exaggerated with sarcasm: “Turns out real people aren’t two-dimensional cartoonish villains. Who would’ve thought?”(Many incels are in fact two-dimensional cartoonish villains, but never mind.) “Wow, I can’t believe that lonely virgins aren’t a significant threat to society!” commented another. “Next thing you’ll tell me, sexually active men are the majority of cheaters and domestic abusers.” (Don’t try to parse the logic of that last sentence; your brain might explode.)
Of course, this being Incels.is, other commenters used the report as an excuse to drop some cartoon villain misogyny. One suggested that he would only accept the new report “if they realize that women are responsible for the growing dislike towards women. Then again, they’d never have the balls to conduct such a study to see why men actually dislike women. They’d rather blame Andrew Tate instead of women’s actions.” Another added: “Now they just need to realise the violence foids deservedly receive is by men they choose to have sex with.”
Just another day on Incels.is, I guess.
But it was the Men’s Rights Redditors who really surprised me with their loopy, conspiratorial logic. “Why do they suddenly speak about the manosphere in more positive (not overtly slandering) way?” asked the MRA posting a link to the Guardian article. “What is the agenda? Especially when UK is one of the most men hating country in the world.”
The top comment offered this, er, explanation:
They’re trying to downplay support for Men’s Rights. By doing so, politicians will believe they can get away with more misandrist policies. They can stamp down on men and not lose votes. That’s the narrative The Guardian are pushing.
Another commenter suggested that the powers that be in the UK were using the report to push conscription. “War is coming and they want men to fight,” a third commenter added. “Problem is they’ve spent so long telling men how shit they are, so men won’t fight their wars.”
Someone called Gmotor offered a similar theory, and a stirring call to arms:
They have realised men have had enough AND they need our support AND without white males society is going to collapse. Oh, and the coming war that women really don’t want to have to fight themselves and the establishment realises they are going to lose badly thanks to their stupid policies
Don’t accept it. They have spent decades in a “Battle of the sexes”. Now they want to sue for peace? Nah… we can wait a bit and the terms won’t be anywhere near as favourable. We just need to make sure Gen Z get a proper education on what women are really like and the poison the Left has injected into society for decades. Don’t throw the next generation of men into the military woodchipper.
Ok, then! I guess that this is what “a strong commitment to equal treatment and fairness” looks like.
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Do any of them actually live in the UK?
*insert giant eye roll at people talking about things they are ignorant of*
It must take a lot of effort to be so unhappy.
@Victoious Parasol:
They put in the work, so I clearly they’ve earned it.
Amazing how they can make an accurate point while simultaneously missing it completely, given that AWALT is an article of faith in the manbabyoshpere….
Apropos nothing, other than this is so cute.
https://x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1855968425211830772
Very cute indeed!
Also cute, and possibly of particular interest to Alan (and any others from the UK, or other attorneys):
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5QPqCiMOQDw
@ Vicky P
Ah yes, “Suspiciously handling a salmon”. One of those ancient silly laws that dates back all the way to…1986
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/62/section/32
And was most recently updated in 2009
I do love all those old extant laws though. It can actually be quite tricky getting rid of old laws no longer considered necessary. Take for instance the Fraudulent Mediums Act. That made it an offence to provide occult services for profit. The aim was to stop people exploiting grieving families.
But then all those Doris Stokes type shows became popular. They had a disclaimer that they were for entertainment purposes only; but technically they were illegal. As people seemed to enjoy them and they weren’t conscripts, it was decided to repeal the FMA.
Trouble was, the FMA itself had repealed the old C18th Witchcraft Act. It was no longer an offence to be a witch, just to pretend you were. So a blanket repeal of the FMA would bring the original WA back into force and make real witchcraft an offence again. So they just left it as it was. Now it’s all regulated under general consumer protection laws.
@Alan:
And, of course, a lot of those laws are still on the books purely because it would actually be work to remove them, and they’ve already been rendered unenforceable by court cases. But as long as nobody tries to enforce the laws and then gets sued over it, there’s no actual push to get the laws formally removed. A lot of old ‘sodomy’ laws fall into that category.
And, of course, as we’re currently seeing in the U.S., sometimes those ‘unenforceable’ laws are deliberately kept on the books waiting for the courts to overrule their previous precedent and make those laws enforceable again.
@Alan
I gotta know … how does one suspiciously handle a salmon?
@ Vicky P
Have it dangle out of the end of your sleeve apparently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1740yxx85o
Even the legislation seems to acknowledge it’s going to be a bit of a gut feeling thing.
Not related to the post, but that shitty site registerher.com is back up :/
@ jenora
Oh indeed. It’s a nightmare unwinding legislation. There are so many later amendments and cross references to other legislation. I remember back in 2019 I was on a course for barristers. There was a lass there from the govt legal dept working on ‘Operation Yellowhammer’. That was the project to unravel 40+ years of EU legislation post Brexit. The reason she was on the course was so she could move jobs before that came in as everyone on the team knew it was impossible.
Our courts don’t really have the ability to strike down laws like say US courts do. So it does have to all be done through Parliament and parliamentary time is limited. Hence why we do have so many old laws hanging around until there’s time for a proper tidy up. We only abolished blasphemous libel in 2009 even though there hadn’t been a prosecution for decades. Ironically the govt is now looking at bringing it back.
@Alan
Okay, so non-lawyer me feels better about not being able to answer that question even after reading the page you cited. Thank you!
@ Vicky P
It’s an interesting law because it makes being merely suspicious alone a criminal offence. And that’s a totally subjective test. There’s no requirement of reasonableness, you can convict on a gut feeling.
It is a defence to show you hadn’t actually committed any offences; but even if you have, the Crown don’t have to proceed on those or prove them. You essentially get done for being a bit shifty. Which is pretty cool. Reminds me of this:
Back in my mis-spent youth a mate had a page from a police note book framed. It read: “I was alerted by a strong smell of cannabis. As I approached the vehicle I observed a gentleman with a mohican style haircut attempting to eat a tax disk.” Both he and the police thought that was so funny they gave him the copy.
But a more serious example of suspicion amounting to an offence is this:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/13
It’s an offence to look like you might support a terrorist organisation, even if you actually don’t.
@Alan
Thank you again for the explanation! I have relayed the high points to Mr. Parasol, who says you are a good duck. (I have not told him about Lord Lovaduck, but I should.)
An interesting demonstration of how a system does not need to involve one single microchip to end up accumulating technical debt.
Another instance would be anywhere there’s been a city for a very long time (centuries or more). When they go to dig a new subway or something in, say, New York, they may find all kinds of old tunnels, service ducts, basements, wires, pipes, and even rail lines, and some of the pipes and wires might still be in use …
Very risible that you would be so presumptuous as to suggest that there isn’t anything at all wrong with women, and would be so cavalier as to imply that incels and other assorted manospherians alone shoulder the blame for coming to the very same conclusions that any rational male would come to if they followed the evidence. You haven’t got your dick wet since that time you spilled a slushy on yourself during the Clinton administration, but yet you sit here like some Knight of the Round Table (better yet, in your case, a “Knight as Round as a Table”) with your Poindexterly drawl, your nasal havering about men with balls 100x the size of your own miniscule, leftover-white-jelly-beans-from-the-jar that you’ve got glued to your pelvis. How many of the overweight hags that your inept white-knighting has failed to influence have actually even spit in the direction of your cobwebbed cock? You’re an unman, a great, rotund sack of wheezing effeminacy, bitchily squeaking into the void that your own mediocrity engenders.
I’m what being a real man is all about; I have actual muscles under my skin, not the pretty boy shit that you get from lifting pointless objects up and down all day in an air-conditioned environment, but the kind that can only come with productive labors in the sun, servicing the members of my community with a classical, vigorous masculinity that causes your kind to gasp and run away with soiled britches. I could just see you, Moon Pie falling out of your astonished mouth as I forcefully compel the things in my environment into motion through sheer will power and the machinery of my body, you quaking and anxiously waddling about before setting yourself down (with a very heavy “fwump”) before taking time to alert the authorities and all of your dickless readers about what new danger in your environment has you so vexed. People in this town know to put distance between me and them whenever they see me coming.
@First troll in ages:
Hey, guys, gals, and enby pals, do we give this one 1 point for creativity for coming up with this instead of just lazily copying the others and calling him “Fatrelle”?
Yep, clearly being a “real man” is all about being so insecure and so empty inside that posting random posturing puffery on feminist blogs becomes a compulsion to try to quell those horrid feelings of inadequacy.
Might I suggest something more productive like, say, questioning your gender identity or finding a therapist who can address your insecurities in a safe and confidential environment? Or, at the very least, donating to charitable causes to feed the poor, help women in red states access reproductive health care, fund legal challenges to the Trump regime and legal defenses for targeted minorities and trans people, and maybe provide the latter gender affirming care too?
Well, that speaks volumes about you, doesn’t it? None of it good.
It’s true. I have no dick, just a magnificent rack and a wonderful husband.
@Sylvia
You are suffering from delusions of adequacy; I, on the other hand, am quite content with my already overflowing degree of real-world masculinity, contrasted with the pale,soft-handed blobbiness of this site’s moderator.
I have no need to question my gender identity, when I look in the mirror I see the kind of man that could make his lessers quake, and given that I can pee standing up, I see little need to waste money of the “services” of a professional therapist. I am not the sort of inconsequential roach that would lie on a couch in some air-conditioned room while a shrimpy, pencil-pushing pantywaist with “credentials” plastered all over his walls asks me invasive questions about my mother. A man DOES.
That thing which you imply is no good is in fact that which I refer to as RESPECT. It is EARNED, and by my work, labors, and attributes, I have very much done so, with interest. People can’t handle me, and that’s not my problem.
@Victorious Parasol
You have provided no evidence of either. You are likely flat, and you spend your days chasing your frightened husband about your dwelling with a rolling pin.
Dear lord that is a lot of purple prose to say “I am deeply insecure.”
Ah, it’s pretty clear that our new friend is in fact an old friend, a returning long-time troll I’ve banned several times. I’ll let him post if you all want to play with him a bit, but if you don’t or if he steps over some line (again) I’ll ban him right away.
@Take a Hawk, Dawson:
Wow! Pray regale us trembling prey animals with your adventures in some SpecOp unit so elite and clandestine that the very alphabet used to denote it is ultra-classified! Tell us about your Vantablack belt in Whoop Ass Do, and the 137 concealed weapons you pack in your Secret Hammerspace! And how mere sixteen-year-old HB10 virgin Stacies are no longer worthy of your On-Beyond-Zebra-Chadhood, and nothing will do but to stage a raid on Paradise itself for houris capable of accommodating your two-liter-Coke-jug-sized appendage!
I hate (not really) to disappoint our current troll, but I’m not going to show him my tits. Though I will share his rolling-pin chase fantasy with Mr. Parasol, because my husband makes such a silly face when he’s bemused.