Author Archives:
This Just In: Reddit MRAs don’t know shit about rape prevention, but still have strong opinions about it
So over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the top post at the moment (with more than 370 net upvotes) is a link to this image:
If I might hazard a guess: that’s because IT HAS YOU NUMBSKULLS.
Sigh. Let’s look at a little chart showing the striking decline in the incidence of rape we’ve seen in the last 30 years.
This is based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. Some have criticized the survey’s methodology and say that it undercounts the incidence of rape, but even if that is true, the trend is clear: Rape has declined significantly over the past three decades, and I think it’s fairly obvious that increased awareness and understanding of rape, largely the result of feminist anti-rape campaigns, has contributed significantly to this decline.
Naturally, those who tried to point this out in r/mensrights found themselves downvoted.
Drama! On Reddit, “Mikhael_Varpole” denies everything
Those following the strange tale of Man Boobz’ recently crowned Troll of the Year for 2012 will be intersted to know that someone calling himself Mikhael_Varpole has done a self-post on the Men’s Rights Subreddit claiming that he’s not MRAL after all and declaring me a liar. Here’s his explanation, FWIW.
I’ll be keeping him banned, in any case; even if this serial liar and sockpuppeter is telling the truth about this (highly unlikely, in my opinion), he’s still a serial liar and sockpuppeter.
Also, for the record, he wasn’t using a “similar” IP as Scooby Doo/MRAL; it was the same IP. And he was using the IP before I called him out for sockpuppeting as Torvus Butthorn — which is what he’s referring to, dishonestly of course, when he talks about doxxing.
He’s clearly just trying to stir up more shit, but it looks like the folks in r/mensrights aren’t biting.
Anyway, I guess we can consider this his Troll of the Year acceptance speech.
The Man Boobz Troll of the Year Award for 2012 goes to … MRAL! No, that’s not a typo.
The votes are in and the winner of the highly coveted Man Boobz Troll of the Year Award for 2012 is … MRAL!
Wait, you say, he wasn’t even on the ballot?
Well, no. The troll that got the most votes from you, my dear readers, was the verbose anti-Man Boobz crusader known as Steele — also known as Mikhael Varpole and, briefly, as Torvus Butthorn. Indeed, Steele cruised to victory, getting 47% of the vote, as compared with the 33% received by Tom Martin, his only real competitor. (Dr. Pell came in third, with a mere 6% of the total.)
But as it turns out we’ve been played, big time. The troll we know and love as Steele turns out to have been MRAL all along.
Yes, that MRAL – the long banned commenter who cannot seem to walk away from this blog. We’ve uncovered and banned many of his previous sockpuppets, but somehow he managed to slip his boldest sockpuppet right by us.
Oh, sure. I and others here often wondered if Steele was for real; it seemed pretty clear to me that he couldn’t possibly believe everything he said. But it wasn’t until I went back to some of “Steele’s” earliest comments here, in preparation for this post, that I discovered how justified these suspicions had been. Turns out that one of “Mikhael Varpole’s” IP addresses matched one used by an earlier troll, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, who had been outed as MRAL a couple of months earlier.
D’OH!
“Torvus Butthorn” really should have been a dead giveaway. But otherwise the highly dedicated MRAL did a masterful job of keeping his troll character consistently ridiculous yet plausible enough to not be an obvious phony, and of hiding his particular obsessions in such a way that he didn’t give himself away.
So, congrats, MRAL, and you’re banned again.
After this, the rest of the results are a bit of an anticlimax.
Sunshine Mary wins the Special-est Snowflake award for Female MRA Trolls, with 52% of the vote. Driversuz comes in second with 32%.
Tom Martin easily wins the Worst Human Being award with a stunning 73% to David K Meller’s 22%.
Some Guy Bored With Your Schtick wins Most Tiresome with 58% of the vote; Diogenes is a distant second with 24%.
And JudgyBitch wins Most Pathetic Vote Beggar.
I hope they’re not all MRAL too.
Happy Damn New Year!
Happy New Year! I’ve spent the day so far lazing around, eating leftover pizza and listening to music. And that’s about all I’m going to do, I think.
I’ll be back at work blogging tomorrow.
In the meantime, does anyone have any especially fond memories of Tom Martin and/or Steele from the past year?
Oh, and here’s a video from an Old School New Wave band called Polyphonic Size. It was 1983. They were from Belgium.
Lords of their Dingalings: Men’s Rightsers outraged at Time writer for noting the lack of female characters in The Hobbit
Can you find the woman in this picture?
Uh oh! It seems that some woman is offering some opinions about Tolkien!
Over on Time.com, Ruth Davis Konigsberg has a brief personal essay reflecting on the almost complete lack of female characters in the new Hobbit film, and in Tolkien’s ouvre generally. As she notes, it’s not until about two hours in to the nearly three-hour movie that “we finally meet someone without a Y chromosome,” namely Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel — and she was added into the originally all-male story by the screenwriters. Blanchette’s is the only female name out of 37 named in the cast list – though there are a couple of unnamed female characters who make brief appearances.
No Godwin’s Law here. This Men’s Rights Activist really IS a Nazi.
Great. Another Hitler baby.
Well, now you’ve gone and done it, you evil feminists: you’ve turned 0bvious_Atheist into a Nazi!
We first met the Men’s Rights subreddit regular the other day, when in a fit of ingenuity he blamed the Newtown school shootings on, er, Title IX. Well, his strange political journey has continued, and on his blog, on Boxing Day, the Canadian MRA officially announced his conversion to neo-Nazism. Literally. Let’s let him explain:
Vote Now for Man Boobz Troll of the Year! UPDATE: POLLS CLOSE EARLY
UPDATE: THE POLLS ARE CLOSED. Polldaddy pulled a little switcheroo on me, so I’ve got to pull a little switcheroo on you. I thought it was free, but it turns out that once you get more than 200 responses to a survey in any given month, you have to pay them $200 for a year’s memebership in order to see the rest of the results. Yikes! So I’m just closing the polls instead, and will announce the winners tomorrow. If it’s any consolation, all the winners won by large margins, so I doubt there would have been any upsets if I kept the polls open longer.
And the polls are open! Vote for Man Boobz Troll of the Year, and any of the other special awards you wish to vote for.
The polls will remain open until January 1, when I will write up the results and declare the official winners!
Feel free to campaign for your favorites in the comments below.
2012: Year of Triumphs for the Men’s Rights Movement
Come early to get a good seat!
What a year!
The Men’s Rights movement, the most important human rights movement of the 21st century, got 2012 off to a flying start in February with an event in Bozeman, Montana that was quite literally attended by no one. After that, the year was a whirlwind of activity. Let’s go to the timeline:
Battle of the Banned (Man Boobz trolls)
Miniskirted cyclists prepare to oppress men with their legs.
Feeling nostalgic for some of the Man Boobz trolls of yore? Well, head over to the Men’s Rights subreddit, where two of the greats most terrible are having a battle of wits. It all started when Man Boobz Troll of the Year 2011 NWOslave offered his opinions in a thread discussing Swaziland’s recent banning of “rape-provoking” miniskirts.
Men’s Rights Redditor warns men: “Be careful with your sperm. Your very freedom is at stake.”
Men: Protect your Purity of Essence
It’s official: Men’s Rights Activists are more obsessed with their “precious bodily fluids” than Dr. Strangelove’s General Jack D. Ripper. Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, many of the regulars are celebrating Boxing Day by sitting around on their computers worrying about evil predatory succubi burgling their sperm. Check out this little post, which has gotten 90 upvotes so far:
