S

Scalzi’s thesis:

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US – or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world – is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

Scalzi should have added “cis” to “straight white male,” but otherwise I’d say that’s fairly spot-on.

Of course, as Scalzi himself points out, life for straight white (cis) dudes is not always peaches and cream. They may have any of a number of disadvantages in life that make things difficult for them. They may have been born poor, or in a war zone; they may have been abused as children or the victim of crime or violence as an adult. Or faced any number of other problems and conditions and disadvantages.

Scalzi deals with this issue a little more obliquely than he could have, noting that some people begin the grand game of “The Real World” with more points than others, and that this can make a good deal of difference.

But do straight white cis males face disadvantages stemming from being straight white cis men? I honestly can’t think of any that have affected my life in any serious way, and these small disadvantages pale in comparison to the many advantages. Yeah, I had to register for the draft when I turned 18. Of course, when I registered there was no draft, and there still isn’t one, and the draft has virtually no chance of being resurrected in the foreseeable future, so I can’t say this requirement has affected my life in any tangible way.

As Scalzi puts it:

If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.

Anyway, Scalzi got a lot of responses to his post, many of them from straight white dudes outraged by his assertions. So he wrote a followup taking some of these critics to task. He was particularly amused by the criticism that by “picking on” straight white males he was being racist and sexist.

This particular comment was lobbed at me primarily from aggrieved straight white males. Leaving aside entirely that the piece was neither, let me just say that I think it’s delightful that these straight white males are now engaged on issues of racism and sexism. It would be additionally delightful if they were engaged on issues of racism and sexism even when they did not feel it was being applied to them — say, for example,when it’s regarding people who historically have most often had to deal with racism and sexism (i.e., not white males). Keep at it, straight white males! You’re on the path now!

I am sure there are many gems of obtuseosity in the comments, and in the Reddit thread on his original post. But it’s Friday night, and I have a  migraine — which sucks, but it’s not because I’m a straight white cis dude –  so I’m going to let you guys find them for me.

EDITED TO ADD: Thinking a bit more about Scalzi’s central metaphor here, and I don’t think it completely works: he assumes that obstacles other than racism, sexism, and homophobia can be explained as the equivalent of having started the game with fewer points. But it you have, for example, a disability, that’s something that makes you life harder every day; it’s more akin to raising the difficulty level than to starting off with fewer points. (Not to mention that you’re likely to face bigotry because of it as well.) This doesn’t erase the privileges a straight white male with disabilities gets from being straight, white, and male, of course, but it does ratchet up the difficulty.

Oscar Wilde would be proud. Wait, not proud. Disgusted, and probably a little embarrassed for you.

I took this screenshot the other day. When I went back to see if there were any developments in the thread, I discovered that both the joke and hardwarequestions’ brilliant reply had picked up some more upvotes, and that crankycloud has apparently been banned. I guess that’s one way to deal with hecklers.

EDITED TO ADD: Hey, Tweeps, come on over to Twitter. I’m trying to get a hashtag started: #OscarWildeQuotesWithLolOnTheEnd

Putting women on pedestals: Not good feminism.

Roger Ebert recently wrote a well-intentioned but misguided faux-feminist blog post setting forth the thesis that “Women are better than men.” Here’s the gist of it, from his opening paragraph:

Women are nicer than men. There are exceptions. Most people of both sexes are probably fairly nice, given the nature of their upbringing and opportunities. But in terms of their lifelong natures, women are kinder, more empathetic, more generous. And the sooner more of them take positions of power, the better our chances as a species.

Here’s how to respond appropriately to this sort of argument, courtesy of Jill at Feministe:

I love me some Roger Ebert, but this is a big piece of crap. His point basically comes down to, “Women are nurturing and wonderful and non-violent, men are competitive and want to see boobs, because Evolution.” …  Most people are capable of great kindness; most people are capable of being total assholes. The degree to which any of us displays any of these traits depends largely on circumstance and partly on individual personality and temperament. Those things are certainly influenced by gender, but our gender does not in fact hard-wire us to be nice or awful.

Here’s how to respond inappropriately to this sort of argument, courtesy of John the Other at A Voice for Men:

[Y]es, it’s another one of those articles. Men are bad, women are good, men are worse, women are better, men are the worst thing ever, and women are just the best, squee!!! …

Ebert, in his attempt to ingratiate himself to a mostly female audience has done what countless other approval seeking men have done. Simply, to metaphorically prostrate himself – declaring – look, I’m a good man, not like those other bad men, you see how I heap scorn on them and flatter you? Approve of me!…

Ebert’s male-abasing and false esteem is a tired and monotonous repetition of standard gender ideology.

Sing along with me, you all know the words!

Women are better then men!

Boom boom boom!

They do everything better than them!

Boom boom boom!

 

Ladies are generally nicer!

Quack quack quack!

Their thoughts and feelings are higher!

Quack quack quack!

 

Girls and women are smarter!

Bing! Bang! Smash!

To keep up, men must try harder!

Clang! Bang! Bash!

 

Well, there’s a thoughtful argument.

Naturally, the commenters at AVfM are happy to join in the fun.

Shrek6 trots out the old “we hunted the mammoth” argument:

[E]verything on this earth from the knickers these women wear on their fat buts, all the way through to just about every single thing they touch in their day, up to and including homes, buildings, cars, trains, rockets, and the food they stuff down their throats, has all been either invented or produced by those useless ‘less than’ human, men. What a waste of space those men are!

Yep, I can feel a man strike coming on.

If all the men and boys in this world pulled the pin and sat on their buts for a month, the world would come to a grinding halt and anarchy would reign. All the women would be seen crying, screeching at men with gnashing teeth. Then they would eventually come begging.

Yep, that day is coming to these over indulged women. That day is coming!

Andybob, meanwhile, offers this analysis of what he sees as the gender enemy:

There are four main categories of women:

1) Women who care about the men in their lives, but never make the connection that their naked misandry contributes to the misery of these men. Most of those women who whooped and cackled when RegisterHer lifer, Sharon Osborne, expressed delight when an innocent man was genitally mutilated belong in this category. They would not have cackled quite so much if someone had brutalised their sons. Other women’s sons? No problem. It has ever been thus: white feather campaign in WWI.

2) Women who may pay lip service to caring about the men in their lives, but in reality, see them in the same way they see all other men – as utility objects to be manipulated and exploited. Such women don’t think of the men in their lives at all, except when they want something from them.

3) Feminists. These range from the mild (man-hating bigots), to the radical (man-hating bigots who advocate genocide and eugenics).

4) Women MRAs. These are rare women (I’ve never seen one, even in captivity), who regard men as actual people with collective and innate value. I can count them on two hands with fingers to spare.

Men have been struggling for many decades now with nary a peep from women. There is a reason for this.

They don’t care.

Feminism has provided today’s pampered princesses with the privilege-stuffed, consequence-free Nirvana that they believe they’re entitled to. Do you really think they can be swayed with reason and logic? Have you ever tried to discuss men’s rights with women? They will show concern for some imaginary, hypothetical female from some Third World country before they give two shits about the son, brother or friend standing in front of them. …

We are in a battle against a powerful, well-financed and establishment-supported entity which has succeeded in stealing our rights in every sphere. This has been done with the silent collusion of vast numbers of women. As such, a few “derogatory remarks” are the least they deserve.

Guys, I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re sort of making it look like Ebert might have a point.

Happily, I know that you all are statistical outliers, and that your raving misogyny (while it may reflect views common amongst AVFM readers, as evidenced by the upvotes those comments got) doesn’t reflect the views of most men. Heck, even some Men’s Rights Redditors are getting sick of your bullshit.

Is Mr. Sookdeo trolling here? Over on Bronysay, where I found this, someone claiming to know him says he was serious, just a bit “confused.” The questions seem sincere to me. Ugh.

A

the SPLC did not label MRAs as members of a hate movement; nor did our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites – false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like – are all without merit. But we didcall out specific examples of misogyny and the threat, overt or implicit, of violence.

Thomas James Ball, for example, who was hailed as a martyr on so many men’s rights forums, called for arson attacks on courthouses and police stations. The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik wrote extensively about the evils of feminism. We included as much as we did about Register-Her.com because it is so intimidating to its targets, not all of whom are criminals. When Elam accused Vliet Tiptree, a pseudonymous contributor to RadFem Hub, of “calling for extermination of half the human race; the male half, that is,” he offered a cash reward for her real identity. The names and locations of several candidates were publically aired.

Goldwag also takes a look at some of the radical feminists that have become boogeywomen for so many MRAs, and deals with other MRA complaints.

If you’re a regular reader of Man Boobz you’ll want to read the whole thing.

The Men’s Rights subreddit has already linked to Goldwag’s article, which has provoked not only the predictable SPLC-bashing but also some criticism of A Voice for Men and Paul Elam.

Obviously Elam and other MRAs will respond to Goldwag’s latest as well. Post links in the comments below as you find them, and I’ll add them to this post.

EDITED TO ADD: And, right on schedule, AVfM responds to Goldwag’s response. It’s a John the Other post, so be prepared to read a lot of words saying not very much.

On his own blog, Goldwag responds to Mr. The Other.

Goldwag’s piece also got some criticism from the STFUfauxminists Tumblr blog for quoting a RadFem known for her transphobia.

I’ll add more links as I find them.

ETA 2: MORE LINKS

Goldwag responds to Paul Elam

RadFem News Service

Run, Dick, run!

One widespread belief of the manosphere crowd is that “Western women” – that is, white women in developed countries – are a bunch of stuck-up, demanding, divorce-initiating feminism-infected harridans. So the proper course of action for the almost-all-white dudes of the manosphere is to seek a woman with darker skin and a (supposedly) more pliable nature. Even better: beleaguered white dudes should move to one of the countries where these feminism-free gals live, because when you bring them to the United States they too have a tendency to become infected with evil feminism and to become as stuck-up and evil as their lighter-skinned sisters.

This belief isn’t universal amongst manospehreians by any stretch of the imagination. White nationalist manosphreians (like those who populate the blog In Mala Fide) get testy when their women are considered inferior to non-whites; others think that all women are equally evil. Still others think that moving to a whole other country is too much of a hassle. Rarely do you find a manospherian willing to state the obvious: that the “white women suck” mantra is as offensive to non-white women as it is to white women.

Over on The Spearhead, one commenter has taken the “white women suck” mantra to its logical extreme, arguing that these evil women need to be quite literally bred out of existence.

Let’s take a look at walking in hell’s argument:

If one thinks about it, the misandry and divorce problem are problems that occur in countries where the women are light-skinned–mostly Northern Hemisphere Western Contries, and where the governments are atheist or were atheist.

Problem countries are Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, United States, France, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Austrailia, New Zealand, etc. In short–the West. Light skinned women are by nature more dominant and controlling. If you combine that with a culture that encourages bad behavior, you as a man are doomed.

So far, this is standard-issue western-women-suck-ism. But then Hell starts talking about genes.

So the misandry problem is problem of genetics and culture. We can see the genetic differences in the United States. Asian Women divorce their husbands at a much lower rate then the other racial groups. The exception in America is the American Black Women (But isn’t she exceptional, after all)? I mean native African Women have very little resemblance to American Black Women). 

Ironically, it’s fairly typical for the white-women-suck crowd to hate black women even more; in this case the only non-typical thing about Hell’s screed is that he’s willing to cut African women some slack.

Now Hell sets forth his basic thesis:

My point is this: I maintain the best wife for a white man is someone darker skinned then he is. I maintain that the best culture for the white man and his wife is a man-friendly culture. For example, a white man and Mexican woman living in Mexico; a white man and Thai Woman living in Thailand; a white man and a Morracan Woman, living in Morraco; a white man and Turkish Woman, living in Turkey. This strategy neutralizes the light-skinned genes, and at the same time neutralizes the cultural influences.

Note: If you plan to move to Morocco to escape the tyranny of white women, you should probably learn to spell the name of the country correctly first.

Naturally, Hell can’t bring himself to suggest that white men should marry black women. And he thinks that even black men should give African-American women a pass:

For a black man, possibly the best plan is to emigrate to Africa in order to have a family. I had a friend who did this. Most African divorce laws keep the man firmly in charge with sole custody automatically going to the man.

While some Western-women-hating manospherians have something of a fetish for Eastern European women, Hell warns his fellow men to avoid these sneaky deceitful harridans as well:

Whatever you do, never bring an Eastern European, Russian, or Ukrainian Girl to the Unites States.

But it isn’t only the Eastern European women who are spoiled by the evil feminism of the west.

 In fact don’t bring any woman to the United States. Remember: even the healthiest fish becomes sick when the lake is poisoned. Some fish will become sicker than others depending on their genetic makeup. For example, that nice girl you brought over from Asia might not divorce you when she comes to the USA, but she is likely to become a much different (difficult and unpredictable) person.

So who is the best man for the white woman living in the West? Quite simply, no man; or another woman. Very few men in the West will be able to satify Western White Women.

And this, naturally, leads to what what we might call Hell’s Final Solution to the problem:

These women need to be bred out of existence.

We as men can speed the extinction of Western White Women by encouraging them to pursue the single life or to pursue another woman as a spouse (lesbianism). We can do this actively and passively. Actively by outright encouragement, and passively by never giving a Western Woman access to our sperm, money, or time.

Despite its, er, problematic content, Hell’s comment managed to draw 21 upvotes from fellow Spearheaders, more than twice the number of downvotes it received.

I eagerly await A Voice for Men’s campaign to uncover and expose the identities of Hell and his upvoters – as well as against The Spearhead itself for providing a safe harbor for such thinking. I mean, AVfM literally offered a $1000 award for the personal information of a feminist who made similarly troubling remarks about men, and a separate $1000 reward for the identities of those involved in a theatrical production about a  feminist who wrote a famous manifesto about the evils of men. Surely the A Voice for Men crowd will be equally offended by these remarks from their comrades on The Spearhead.

Here on Man Boobz we content ourselves with highlighting bad ideas, not harassing or threatening or exposing the personal information of those who promulgate them. The “war of ideas” isn’t an actual war. The bad ideas we highlight here are as silly as they are reprehensible; they will ultimately vanish from the world on their own — though hopefully our mockery of them will help to speed that process a little bit.

EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to scarlettpipistrelle for pointing me to this lovely comment.

The good folks in ShitRedditSays recently highlighted one such comment, from a fellow calling himself nickfromredcliff. As you can see from the edits to his comment below, poor Nick felt somewhat embarrassed and even affronted by the attention.

When I checked his comment again this morning while writing this post, I found he’d edited it again. Gone was his plaintive plea for tolerance; in its place, a bunch of new rape jokes. (You can find a screenshot of his original comment here; at the time it had 39 upvotes.)

Let’s all use this as a learning experience.

And while we’re at it, let’s have a toast for the douchebag.

O

Elam starts off by addressing the mothers of the world, suggesting he’s got a “a socially conscious twist” on the traditional Mother’s Day celebrations. Mothers, he argues, should gather together the flowers they’ve been given by their loved ones and:

Place a bunch of daffodils at a dumpster near you, perhaps one in which one of you, or one of your kind, has tossed an unwanted baby, leaving it there to slowly die alone in a pile of trash.

Perhaps you could lay a single rose at the base of a bridge that has been used by a mother to throw her baby into an icy river. Perhaps you can lay it there with hands that have beaten or shaken a baby to death.

You probably didn’t see that coming, did you? He goes on.

Now perhaps some of you could place large, colorful arrangements at the abortion centers where women go to have children cut out and laid to rest in those colorful and attractive biohazard containers that are all the rage in the clinics. …

Maybe you can lay virtual flowers at your computers to honor all the children that you and your sisters have pimped out to pedophiles, or perhaps the blossoms could be placed in your child’s room, which also doubles as your preferred place to abuse your own.

Oh, but you say you haven’t done any of these things, and that abortion isn’t actually the same as infanticide? No matter. Elam has an answer for that:

This is not a request for some mothers, or a percentage of them, but all of you. In fact, you don’t even have to be a mother. If you have a vagina, the blood of all those children, who are abused far more at the hands of women than men, has stained your skin and caked around the cuticles of your fingers.

If you are a mother, particularly one of the many abusers, or just one that has remained silent as your sisters have beaten, choked, stabbed, burned, drowned, abused, neglected, dumped, tortured and otherwise done the unspeakable to the most defenseless among us, then I hope to see those flowers in your murderous hands, paying homage to those that have been unfortunate enough to be placed in your path. …

In Daffodils for Dumpsters the gash gets you in, and you don’t really have a choice.

You see, Elam has decided that we live in an era of “collective guilt,” and that the evil (straw) feminists who go around blaming all men for the actions of a few – through such dastardly things like rape awareness seminars – deserve to find themselves collectively blamed as well.

Except that Elam’s post goes well beyond an  ill-conceived and ill-intentioned attempt at “turnabout is fair play.” This isn’t a piece of Swiftian satire. He actually believes all this hateful nonsense, and says as much:

Now, do I really mean all this? Yes. It is not that women deserve to be collectively regarded as child abusers and killers. Most aren’t. Most are actually very good to their children and can even be trusted with the children of others. But that truth is not what is important here.

What is important is the children, or the principle, or whatever other bullshit we make up to convince ourselves it is not about demonizing women when that is exactly what we are doing.

I have to confess I have no idea what he’s trying to say in the second paragraph here. Did he mean to say “men” instead of “women?” If so, this is an interesting little slip.

He continues:

The fact is that mothers are more dangerous than fathers where it concerns children. They always have been. It is only a few percentage points in that direction, but of course in a White Ribbon way, it is more than enough to justify pointing a finger at your entire sex and feeling superior as we watch you atone for the unspeakable acts of a minority.

So, suck it up ladies. If you knew about White Ribbon and said nothing to object to it; if in general you have remained silent or actively participated as the image of the male half of the population has been reduced to that of a depraved threat, the step up and get your flowers. You deserve every last petal, stem and thorn.   

I imagine Elam chuckling a bit as he typed that final word.

And a happy Mother’s Day to you, too!

Oh, and if you found yourself wondering about that “White Ribbon” thing, Elam is evidently (as best I can figure it) referring either to the women who, during World War I, handed out white ribbons to men who didn’t enlist in the army. Or he’s referring to this contemporary campaign to fight violence against women. But I don’t live inside Elam’s head, so I’m not sure what he meant, or why he seems to think that all women would know about either campaign, much less have any responsibility for them.

NOTE: Elam is also celebrating Mother’s Day by suggesting I had something to do with creating Reddit’s appalling “beatingwomen” subreddit as part of a nefarious plot to make the Men’s Rights movement look even worse than it manages to do on its own.

You may notice that Elam presents no actual evidence to back up his claims. There is no such evidence, because Elam’s accusations are utterly and completely untrue.

I have nothing whatsoever to do with r/beatingwomen. Nothing. I don’t know anything about who created it, or what their aim was beyond laughing at pictures and videos of violence against women. As I’ve said before, it’s a vile place. I think Reddit should shut it down.

This was posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day, with the headline: “Saw this today and I suppose that’s where we’re headed.” It’s gotten 556 upvotes, last I checked. (Those are net upvotes: it got 848 upvotes, 292 downvotes.) This is the world that a lot of MRAs, and Redditors in general, think they live in.

A handful of Redditors, like this one, objected to the hysteria:

Notice the downvotes.

Amazingly, one of the few voices of reason to emerge in the whole discussion (besides that downvoted commenter and serveral others) turned out to be none other than Pierce Harlan of the False Rape Society (now called Community of the Wrongly Accused). While not averse to spreading misinformation about rape and false rape accusations himself, he argued in a comment (and in a similarly worded blog post) that this kind of raving hysteria wasn’t helpful, concluding:

The delicate balance that commands us to punish rapists while not punishing the innocent is extremely serious business. We need more sober, more adult, more serious voices to be part of the public discourse. The last thing we need is more Chicken Little hysteria, no matter which side it’s coming from.

I’m guessing the upvotes he got for his comment must have come from visitors from his blog, because up until he posted that comment the few dissenters were mostly being dismissed.

The Men’s Rights subreddit: Waxing hysterical about imaginary oppressions since March 2008.

Future MGTOWer?

For a bunch of guys who love to pretend they don’t care about women, Men Going Their Own Way certainly do love to talk about them. So much so that I’m thinking they may need to update their little acronym to MGTOAW: Men Going Tediously On About Women.

Over on MGTOWforums.com, for example, the regulars are having their tenth billion discussion about how women totally get all ugly as they get older, while men get handsomer and more awesome. Gannicus, himself 40 years YOUNG, starts things off with this:

To me, one of the most obvious things a man should notice is that in the US, most American women have fallen apart or completely without value by 40.

Is it just me, or does that “in the US, most American women” bit remind you of Miss South Carolina and her “US Americans?”

I know some will say it happens earlier, but lets just stick with a round number. And lets forget about virtue, loyalty, honesty, etc for a moment, which we know is not exactly known to be a top export of American women. Just being completely shallow and superficial, based on appearance alone, I find it disgusting and repulsive to view virtually any woman at 40. I just turned 40 and I am proud of my appearance. I expect to continue taking care of my body,etc.

However, I feel that based on looks. weight, hair, facial quality, etc. that 1% or less of Amercian women at 40 are, shall we say,bangable or even tolerable if you had to stare at for 10 minutes. And lets not even mention that wretched term from a bygone era called feminity. That is almost unheard of in the US in any age group. …

Which then leads me to wonder what the hell do young guys think their female partners will look like at 40? I mean, do they think THEIR girl will be different?

I’m just throwing this out as a hypothesis here, but I’m guessing that “most young guys” aren’t angry, bitter, woman-hating assholes who think all women over 40 are hideous hagbeasts.

Back on MGTOWforums.com, Downandout repectfully disagrees with Gannicus thesis. He believes that many women get ugly long before they hit 40.

It’s not so much that American women hit 40, it’s that 40 hits American women. Hard.

Jokes aside, I don’t think you can peg it to one number. A lot of skanks are starting to look awful in their 20s. Take Lindsay Lohan for example. Girls are starting to drink, do drugs, eat shit, and party hard at a very early age. Their small bodies can’t take that kind of abuse, and it’s showing. On top of that, they wear pounds of makeup to cover up the abuse, which only further contributes to the problem.

Deathslayer quotes the expert testimony of a colleague who calls himself RealDealBrotha:

Look at how quickly these chick fall COMPLETELY off, yet they STILL think they can do everything a man does for as long as a man does it…. NOT! …

Look at all the females who whore away their prime years, or go into career mode, or just choose men for silly reasons and NOT try to better themselves enough to be WORTHY of a good man (who is NOT a simp) wifing them up. They have so little regard for men that they think that they can have good men at their beck and call after they’re aged out fat chicks dragging around kids who they had with other men. It REALLY does NOT work that way, yet they don’t ever figure out the obvious until it’s too late.

We see and hear this story all the time. It comes up so often, that it’s really funny to me now. It warms my heart to know how badly these arrogant, misandric, selfish, worthless women are doomed to crash, burn and live the remainder of their wretched lives as bitter old maids whose only value will be as jumpoffs for bottom-feeder men who lack the guts and the nuts to raise the bar.

It’s always nice to see MGTOWers complain about misandry in comments overflowing with angry misogyny.

Toadman, for his part, seems happy to ignore women altogether, celebrating his independence by sitting at home eating canned food that’s way past its expiration date.

I have an unopened can of pork-and-beans in the cupboard that will taste the same as when canned. It’s lasted longer than the 10-15 years of female fertile desireability. Talk about “shelf-life”.

As they say, living well is the best revenge.