By David Futrelle
We’re awash in a wave of male political violence.
Tag: men’s rights activists
By David Futrelle
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you owe it to yourself to give Sady Doyle’s excellent examination of the roots of the hateful, violence-obsessed incel subculture a thorough read. She expertly traces the intricate connections between various factions of the manosphere — from MRAs to pickup artists to incels — that like to insist they have absolutely nothing to do with one another.
The Spring 2018 WHTM pledge drive is on! Please donate generously to spite Paul Elam! Thanks!
By David Futrelle
I don’t check Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men all that often these days — the world has largely moved on from it and so have I — but I stopped by there yesterday while working on my post about the odious Don Blankenship, and happened to notice that the one and only Paul Elam had weighed in on the Cosby GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY verdict in a post whose title declared bluntly that “we’re all Bill Cosby now.”
By David Futrelle
I’ve got a piece up on the HuffPost today on incels. An excerpt:
By David Futrelle
The last time we checked in on alt-right gun enthusiast Christopher Cantwell, the infamous “crying Nazi” arrested on weapons charges after the debacle in Charlottesville last summer, he was battling online with fellow alt-rightists angry that he had agreed to become an informant for the FBI — which he claimed was part of an ingenious master plan to give the FBI dirt on antifascist activists.
Yesterday, I wrote about former A Voice for Men Number Two Boy Dean Esmay’s weird and hyperbolic AVFM post attacking Roosh Valizadeh, the scummy pickup artist that a previous AVFM post had described as a “deep thinker” and “a layered, tempered and earnest guy, who truly wants to help other men.”
Today I’d like to bring to your attention another, even weirder attack on Roosh that ran in AVFM alongside Esmay’s post. In “Roosh Rage,” longtime AVFM commenter Bryan Scandrett angrily denounced what he described variously as the “The Greatest Rape Hoax Ever,” “The MSM Global Rape Hoax,” and “the Great MSM Rape Hoax.”
So this is … interesting. Last night, Saturday Night Live did a sketch, featuring guest host Lena Dunham, about Men’s Rights Activists. Alas, it wasn’t actually funny, or particularly on the mark, and it was kind of, sort of, maybe, a little bit racist (well, ok, a lot), but it did at least give a pretty good impression of what people in the real world think of the MRAs we know and loathe so well. I can’t embed it here, so go take a look at it on Hulu.
The folks in the Men’s Rights subreddit are up in arms about it, and have started not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six threads on the subject. (There may be more; that’s all I noticed.) Well, it’s not often they get this much attention, so I guess their excitement is understandable.
Given that the sketch was actually pretty crappy in a lot of ways, the MRAs did have some legitimate complaints to make against it — like the fact that the women in the sketch mocked the MRA character for being an unattractive loser. But naturally the Men’s Rights Redditors managed to undercut even this perfectly reasonable criticism by attacking the women in the sketch for being uggos. (Oh, misogynists, why do you hate Lena Dunham so much?) Here’s a rather delightfully ironic snippet of the discussion:
![SNL manages to misinterpret MRA arguments, shame man who are less physically attractive than others by implying they are somehow lesser, says that all MRAs are only MRAs because of bad love experiences, and accuse the MRHM of being pro-life, which is a blatant lie. (hulu.com) submitted 7 hours ago by Feminists_Are_Jelly 29 comments share source save hide give gold report hide all child comments sorted by: hot navigate by: submitter | moderator | friend | admin | IAmA | images | popular | new you are viewing a single comment's thread. view the rest of the comments → [–]MockingDead 16 points 6 hours ago (27|11) A bunch of unattractive unfunny women impugning a man for being not an apex male. permalink save source save give gold hide child comments [–]ugly_duck 5 points 5 hours ago (16|11) A bunch of unattractive unfunny women impugning a man for being not an apex male. Imagine if the genders were reversed. permalink save source save parent give gold [–]Grubnar 6 points 4 hours ago (12|6) I am trying ... and I can't. Men are not usually judged by their attractiveness, but by their wealth.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ironymrastyle.png?resize=536%2C556&ssl=1)
Indeed, I’ve rarely seen irony so thick as in the outraged comments of MRAs in these threads. Here’s another angry Redditor:
Heavens! Sexism and shaming! MRAs NEVER engage in either of those things!
Oh, wait. That’s pretty much the entire basis of their movement.
Ruwanimo, you say you can’t imagine how it would look if the genders were reversed? You don’t have to imagine. All you have to do is go to the Men’s Rights subreddit, or A Voice for Men, or any other prominent (or not-so-prominent) Men’s Rights site. Or you could read through the Man Boobz archives. Ta da! Literally hundreds — make that thousands — of examples of MRAs directing “flagrant sexism and shaming” at women. (Also note: this shaming is directed at women, not only at feminists, whereas the SNL skit directed its shaming only at MRAs, not at men in general.)
You’re welcome!
The AgainstMensRights subreddit is also all over this thing, though they’ve limited themselves to four threads — here, here, here and here, which is where I found that first discussion I screenshotted.