We Hunted The Mammoth
Today, a fascinating – and infuriating – case study in how Men’s Rights Activists twist reality around in order to fit their peculiar ideology. Obviously, they do this all the time, but it’s hard to find a clearer example of the MRA Reality Distortion field in action than the video I’ve pasted in below from A Voice for Men.
[TRIGGER WARNING for picture of brutalized woman]
If you want to show someone what sort of website A Voice for Men is, have them look at the following screenshot, which I’m putting below the jump because it may well trigger some readers in its depiction of the effects of domestic violence on women:
Hey, do you need an instant karma boost on Reddit? Here’s how to get yourself hundreds of upvotes in four easy steps!
1) Make or find a misogynistic meme graphic that suggests women are terrible and makes light of domestic violence
2) Post it to the AdviceAnimals subreddit with the headline “I know I’m going to get downvoted into oblivion, but its true….”
3) There is no step 3
4) Enjoy your hundreds of upvotes!
Huh. I guess that’s really only two steps.
Graphic after the jump because — trigger warning — it makes light of domestic violence, as do several of the other comments I’m going to quote.
Seriously, if you’re feeling depressed, don’t read these.
I’m not sure how many of you have been following the story of the recent spa shooting in Wisconsin, in which an (angry, controlling, abusive) estranged husband murdered his wife and two others at a spa where she worked, before turning the gun on himself.
Unfortunately, stories like this are far from uncommon – domestic violence often escalates when female victims break off relationships with abusive men. (While dumped women often stalk male exes, they are far less likely to resort to violence.) All those studies that MRAs like to cite about how domestic violence between men and women is somehow equal don’t take into account violence that happens after the relationship is brought to an end.
I was reading this article, about the heroic efforts of Zina Haughton, the murdered wife in the spa shootings, to convince her ex to spare the lives of others in the spa at the time, when I made the mistake of reading the comments, which had degenerated into a bizarre “debate” over gun control. The, er, highlight of the discussion was this bizarre conspiracy theory:
Apparently gun enthusiasts can be as paranoid, delusional and self-absorbed as any entitled asshole in the manosphere.
So there was a bit of ugliness over on the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day. No, scratch that; there was a giant explosion of ugliness.
A couple of days ago, you see, a Redditor with a nine-day-old account posted a story to r/menrights detailing the alleged ill-treatment he’d gotten at the hands of a vengeful ex-wife and an unsympathetic family court system. The story was filled with literally unbelievable details – among other things, he claimed to have been rendered homeless by the demands of the court, forced to pay $1000 a month in spousal support to his ex though she had a $60,000 a year job. Some commenters challenged the veracity of the tale – while the OP gave a case number in his post, no one has been able to find evidence that a case with that number actually exists. (The OP has not responded to the skeptics.)
But most of the respondents assumed the story was true. And why not? It seemed to reinforce every paranoid MRA fantasy of evil women and courts out of control. Despite its fishiness, the post got more than 700 net upvotes.
And that’s where the ugliness began. Not content to merely offer the man sympathy and advice, many commenters started talking murder, and some of the most violent comments got dozens of upvotes.
Some misogynists seem to have a really difficult time telling the difference between consensual kinkiness and domestic violence. Over on the Happier Abroad forums, our old friend Peter-Andrew: Nolan(c) – who doesn’t really seem to be all that happy, honestly – tells the fellows about a woman he recently met. (Note: the faux ellipses in the quotes to follow are all from the original.)
I am now able to look a woman in the eyes, even from some distance, and know if she is a decent woman or not. I only developed this two years or so ago and have only had it happen 4 times. I am not saying that it is ONLY these women who are decent women….I am saying that the 4 this has happened to turned out to be pretty good women…
By a “pretty good woman” he seems to mean a woman who hates women nearly as much as he does:
Well,I got carried away there. It’s not literally the whole world. Only a teensy weensy portion of it.
The fellows at A Voice for Men, you see, evidently stung by criticism that they aren’t activists, have begun engaging in real, honest-to-goodness real-world activism, by which I mean that a handful of them, some in Canada and at least one in Australia, have been putting up posters advertising the AVFM website.
In other words, their activism consists of putting up posters for a website whose only activism thus far has consisted of putting up posters for itself.
Well, eventually they’ll get the hang of it, I guess.
Yesterday, we took a look at Ferdinand Bardamu’s manosphere manifesto “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” a thoroughly despicable piece of writing that concludes:
Women should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.
I decided to take a look at Bardamu’s post yesterday after running across a discussion of it in Reddit’s new FeMRA subreddit, a forum ostensibly devoted to what “women can do to advance men’s rights as women.” It’s a strange little subreddit, started by a man and dominated by some of Reddit’s most unsavory MaleMRAs, some of them banned in the regular Men’s Rights subreddit.
NOTE: “Bardamu” was ultimately revealed to be the pseudonym of the unlovely and untalented Matt Forney.
We talked a bit yesterday about pick-up artists and domestic violence – specifically, Heartiste’s suggestion that aspiring alpha males look to Chris Brown as a role model. So today I thought I would take the opportunity to write about one of the skeeviest and most notorious posts the manosphere has generated thus far – Ferdinand Bardamu’s “The Necessity of Domestic Violence.”
Bardamu took down his blog In Mala Fide some months back – I found the text of his post up on Manosphere Copies, a blog set up by the even skeevier MRA who goes by the name Jeremiah (aka JeremiahMRA, aka Things Are Bad) to host posts from manosphere blogs that are no more. In Mala Fide, which combined elements of PUA, Men’s Rights activism and “Human Biological Diversity” style racism, had a great deal of influence in the manosphere in its day. Bardamu published reprehensible things with regularity – see here, here and here for examples – so his defense of domestic violence is hardly unexpected.