We Hunted The Mammoth
Last month, police say, University of Mary Washington student and feminist/LGBT activist Grace Mann was murdered — bound and asphyxiated by a male housemate and fellow student.
An antifeminist blogger is blaming her death on feminist jokes about misandry.Â
The good folks at A Voice for Men, the most influential Men’s Rights site out there, like to talk a lot about how much they hate hatred. Specifically, the alleged hatred allegedly promoted by feminists. Here’s Dean Esmay, the site’s Managing Editor and Chief Operations Officer, offering some typically nuanced thoughts on the subject earlier today on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/597082318168272896
So how have the powers that be at AVFM responded to the revelation that one of their contributors, Indian MRA Amartya Talukdar, is a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan who thinks Hillary Clinton is a “Jewess?” Did they denounce Talukdar for his embrace of perhaps the most hateful hater in history, and take down his posts on their site? Not so much.Â
On May 7th, as I noted here yesterday, Men’s Rightser Mike Buchanan only managed to score a humiliating 153 votes in the UK election. This brought the total number of votes cast for Buchanan’s Justice for Men and Boys Party to — let me doublecheck the math here — 216 votes. 216.
The Labour Party, by contrast, won a total of 9,347,326 votes. But this was considerably less than the victorious Tories, and was seen as such a disaster for the party that Labour leader Ed Miliband resigned in disgrace.
But Men’s Rights Activists can never admit defeat. And so huge loser Mike Buchanan has declared his total drubbing to be a victory of sorts, telling the world — or whatever tiny portion of it that was paying attention — that his party had “achieved what we set out to achieve.”
So I was wondering if any of A Voice for Men’s readers had spoken up in the comments there about a rather sensitive subject: the fact that the supposed “human rights” site recently published a post that was not only 1) an apologia for marital rape but also, 2) written by a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan.
When I took at look at the comments there this morning, the answer was (of course) no: there was no mention of AVFM contributor Amartya Talukdar’s numerous Tweets describing the Holocaust as a hoax, Hitler as a great man, and Hillary Clinton as a “Jewess.”
Instead, I found that those who challenged Talukdar’s post (archived here) — which defended the Indian government’s refusal to see marital rape as rape — got harsh rebukes from other AVFM commenters and the site’s moderators, who went so far as to actually ban two commenters unhappy with Talukdar’s rape apologia.
No, really.
Apparently the UK elections are a bit of a disaster. But there is one bit of good news amidst the wreckage:
Mike Buchanan of the Justice for Men and Boys party is a huge loser.Â
My post yesterday about #HowToSpotAFeminist— which is still going — didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the ugliness and absurdity of the hashtag.
So here are some more brilliant insights from the antifeminist squad, including blatant transphobia, rape jokes, shout-outs to Elliot Rodger, several honest-to-goodness “we hunted the mammoths,” and a truly astounding lack of self-awareness.
Amartya Talukdar is a Men’s Rights Activist and self-described “dedicated humanist” who’s written numerous posts for A Voice for Men — most notoriously, the explicit apologia for marital rape that I wrote about earlier this week. In that post, Talukdar declared that “marriage is a licence for sex” and lamented that if marital rape is made illegal in India, men denied sex by their wives might have to resort to masturbation, prostitution, or cheating to find sexual relief.
That’s right; he seems to think that it’s more of a crime for a woman to “force” a man to turn to masturbation than it is for that man to force sex on his unwilling wife.
Well, it turns out that Talukdar has some other, er, interesting beliefs as well. In a series of recent Tweets, he’s revealed himself to be a Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer who believes that Hillary Clinton is a “Jewess.” No, really.
So have you been following this whole #HowToSpotAFeminist thing on the Tweeter? The hashtag was started a couple of days ago by some right-wing radio dudes as an excuse to say mean things about feminism. By yesterday it had turned into a monster, with some feminists jumping in to try to combat the forces of darkness; as I write this at 7:28 AM Wednesday it’s still going strong.
Happily, the hashtag is proving to be very educational. So I would like to share with you The top 10 shocking “truths” about feminism I’ve learned from #HowToSpotAFeminist. You may want to take notes, as some of them are truly shocking indeed.
A Voice for Men seems to joining the ranks of the marital rape deniers. In a post on the site today (archived here), AVFM contributor Amartya Talukdar attacks proposed laws to criminalize marital rape in India as part of an evil feminist plot to “criminalize marriage” itself. Because, in his mind, there is no such thing as marital rape.
In the post, he offers a muddled assortment of “arguments” against the very idea of marital rape. Echoing the, er, logic of sci-fi author and far-right crank Vox Day, Talukdar explains that once a woman marries a man she gives up her right to say “no” to sex with her husband.
Pickup artist and rape legalization proponent Roosh Valizadeh continues his long march to literal Nazidom. Roosh’s far-right leanings have been obvious for some time, and he’s not exactly shy about his racism. But so far he’s managed to avoid one topic of great interest amongst those who think Hitler had some good ideas, if you think about it.
SPOILER ALERT: It starts with a “J.”
Well, Roosh has now rectified that failing with a post today titled “The Damaging Effects Of Jewish Intellectualism And Activism On Western Culture.” No, really.