Category Archives: homophobia
More terrible MRA thoughts on Sally Ride
Sally Ride, not thinking about boys.
We’ve already heard from the so-called Thinking Housewife on the subject of Sally Ride. Meanwhile, over on The Spearhead, the regulars also have opinions about Ride. Regular commenter Keyster has this to say about Ride’s work in promoting science and technology education for girls:
She was supposed to have inspired a generation of girls to take science and math. While she may have inspired the “Grrl Esteem” movement, very few girls went on to get degrees in math and science as a result of Sally Ride … .
She was frustrated by the fact young girls were very interested in math and science initially, “…but for some reason we lose them around the age of 13.” MMmmm…I wonder why that would be. Because they discovered an interest in boys? Not surprisingly, Sally was able to keep her interest.
That’s right: girls are incapable of thinking about both math and boys. Lesbians are the only women who can sustain an interest in math, because their brains aren’t cluttered with thoughts of Justin Bieber. (Ok, bad example.)
In another comment, Keyster expresses his annoyance at the fact that Ride turned out to be capable of astronautery despite being a woman.
Sally Ride proved that a woman can have “the right stuff”, like Amelia Earheart proved a woman can fly long distances.
OK so now that we know she won’t become hysterical during her period while in outerspace and allow her used tampons to clog the toilet, what do we do with this information? Just because a woman accomplishes something normally associated with men, is this inspiring young girls to spontaneously excel en masse and compete against men in male dominated arenas? Or are women like Sally Ride the exceptions that prove the rule?
You know, “exceptions that prove the rule” aren’t actually a thing. The fact that Ride was a capable astronaut doesn’t actually “prove the rule” that women aren’t capable as astronauts, but instead suggests that this particular rule is not a real rule. You would think that Keyster, as a logical male, would understand this.
The Thinking Housewife tries to tarnish the legacy of Sally Ride with a surreally homophobic eulogy
Sally Ride and her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy
Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died last week, as most of you no doubt know. On The Thinking Housewife, Laura Wood uses the occasion as an opportunity to bash lesbians, feminism, and Ride herself. Wood begins her most unusual eulogy by quoting Gloria Steinem, who once said of Ride:
“Millions of little girls are going to sit by their television sets and see they can be astronauts, heroes, explorers and scientists.”
Wood scoffs at the very notion, suggesting that
Steinem’s real point, in keeping with her intense dislike of women, was that women should want to be astronauts and there was something wrong with them if they didn’t.
So we’re off to a great start here. Wood then offers this patronizing assessment of Ride’s life – which nonetheless turns out to be the nicest thing she says about the legendary astronaut.
Spearheader: Feminist men are “nerds, socially awkward, sissy-gay, annoying or just plain weird.”
So WF Price and the rest of the fellas over on The Spearhead are doing a little bit of armchair psychoanalysis of the dreaded “male feminist” in general, and me in particular. It is fairly amusing stuff.
Price sets forth his highly original thesis:
If you observe genuinely feminist men, there’s something a bit off about them, and it’s tempting to chalk their feminism up to a result of some flaw or aberration in their character. Normal men (aside from those whose paycheck depends on it such as politicians and men who work for feminist-dominated institutions) simply don’t go in for feminism unless it gets them sexual gratification, but those days are pretty much over, so the remnants tend to be an assortment of freaks and guys who have a chip on their shoulder.
“But those days are pretty much over?” Evidently, Price thinks there was a time during which women were obligated to reward feminist men with “sexual gratification,” but that this is no longer the case. So “normal men” have stopped being feminists, or at least stopped pretending to be feminists.
So what are these freakish feminist men of today really getting out of it?
Working in the quote mine, going down down
“I’ve found another incredibly dopey statement from JohnTheOther!”
So our blabby friend JohnTheOther has an especially blabby piece up on A Voice for Men at the moment. Its ostensible subject: the pure eeeevil of unnamed anti-MRAs who misrepresent the World’s Greatest 21st Century Human Rights Movement – the Men’s Rights Movement, that is – through the eeevil practice of “quote mining.”
I didn’t read the whole thing. Mr. TheOther is not what you’d call an efficient writer. Here are a few quotes mined from the article more or less at random that I think will give you a good idea of his, um, style:
Biology, or indeed, evolutionary theory is not really the topic of this discussion, rather it is provided here as example of a rhetorical practice increasingly common among opponents of a small but growing human rights movement. …
The developing practice in opposition to human rights, of quote-mining goes beyond pathetic, into the realm of craven, futile depravity. …
However, it seems that no matter how many times it is explained that a thing formed from (bad) ideas – an ideology, and a group of people, identifiable by sex, are two distinct things, gender ideologues continue to conflate them. …
I don’t know if any of this makes any more sense in context, as I didn’t read the context. Let’s continue:
A year ago, I wrote an article focusing on the necessary public repudiation of violence, and the responsibility of open opposition to those who advocated or promoted a climate of acceptable violence, including those who openly advocate murder, such as a group of swedish feminists, and eugenics advocates on the squalid radical-hub. Statements from my original piece were quoted by at least one amoral zombie, and reframed to present my view as one which called for violence.
Of course, the author of those yellow pixels might not have realized that the original article, along with it’s unambiguous opposition to violence was posted on a site with substantially higher traffic than his own. The craven and stupid dishonesty of the quote-miner was apparent to all but a few, blinded by their own ideological goggles.
Oh, wait, I think those last two paragraphs were supposed to be about me. And I think they were supposed to refer to this post of mine, which took a look at a post of his that defended A Voice for Men’s “outing” of a group of Swedish feminists that the AVFM crew had decided, on the basis of a brief video promoting a theatrical production, were “murder advocates.” His post contained the following (unedited) paragraphs.
That’s right manboob, identifying a group of self-declared murder advocates to the public is more important than protecting those murder advocates from the consequences of advocating murder.
In the truth-is-fiction world of Futrelle’s mind, the men’s right advocates calling for public identification of a hate organization have been transmogrified into promoters of violence.
And what if they get killed David? What if rather than be arrested – as promoters of hate, and public advocates of murder, what if these depraved and murderous female supremacists come to harm at the hands of a citizen. If that happens, it will mean that a society’s system of law, designed to prevent hate organizations, and to allow redress of grievance through non violent due process is gone, wiped out by your ideology of violence and hate. That’s what you’re defending, David.
In my post, I quoted the final paragraph; here I have included the two preceding grafs to give it a bit more, what’s that word, context.
Of course, a couple of paragraphs by themselves are still kind of “out of context” I guess. Since I am pretty sure no one would like it if I simply pasted in the entire post from JtO here, I will instead direct you to his original post, here. You may make of it what you wish. I rather doubt that you will see it as a clearheaded treatise of nonviolence. Especially with that line: “And what if they get killed David?” (Which you can read in context above, or, again, in his original post. Let me link to it a sixth time here, just to make sure you know how to find his original words in context. Oops, that’s seven times now)
Interesting that a master debater of Mr. TheOther’s caliber somehow forgot to provide even one link to the controversy he was referring to, so people might be able to see for themselves what had happened, and judge his claims accordingly. I wonder why that might be?
I’ll skip the next bit in Mr. TheOther’s latest post, in which Mr.TheOther suggests that an opponent of his might have taken a quote of his out of context in a way that makes him look racist and homophobic. But since he offers no links to the actual discussion, there’s no way of judging whether this particular quote-mining claim is true. (Perhaps this discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit could shed some light on it?)
In any case, if we put this particular discussion in a broader, er, context, there is certainly ample evidence of homophobia amongst the A Voice for Men crowd, as I have pointed out here and here. (Protip: If you want to convince people you are not homophobic, you should probably not feature a video mocking “lesbo-bos” in the sidebar of the site you help to run.)
Anyway, this next bit of his definitely has something or other to do with me:
Bottom feeding quote miners indulging in snarky feats of futrelian deceit likely do win rhetorical brownie points, at least when seen through their own ideological goggles. But they are cementing their own a public persona which will wear about as comfortably as klan robes do at a NAACP meeting. The altered landscape this movement is building is not someday, it is now, and it is coming faster all the time.
Uh, dude, my last name has two L’s in it. It should be “Futrellian deceit.” If you’re going to turn my name into a slur, at least spell it correctly.
For individuals in opposition to human rights of men and boys now, whether through lying, repetition of old, false dogmas, or the craven tactic of mis-represented and mis-attributed meaning, the comfort of a formerly one-sided monologue is over. The public squirming we see in attempts to render MRA voices silent or apologetic will escalate before it abates. But that’s okay.
Hey, Mr. TheOther. If you really want to prove my “futrelian” or even my “Futrellian” deceit, how about this: provide specific examples of me taking something you or some other MRA has written out of context in a way that distorts its meaning.
For your convenience, you can find all the Man Boobz posts that reference you here and here.
And for anyone who now has the song “Working In the Coal Mine” stuck in their head, here’s the Lee Dorsey original:
“What a lifeless, limp, ego-centric homo,” and other bon mots from the A Voice for Men crowd
So Mr. Paul Elam was apparently so offended by this video from Jay Smooth defending Anita Sarkeesian and her Tropes Vs Women video project against its many misogynistic detractors that he sat down and wrote out a carefully reasoned rebuttal of all of Mr. Smooth’s points.
Nah, I’m kidding. He wrote a snide couple of paragraphs calling Smooth a “leftist scumbucket,” and a “chickenshit feminist quisling,” and invited his readers to jump in with their own dopey insults. And they did. Some highlights (that is, lowlights):
I showed Paul’s comment to an MRA friend, and he said, “dude, you have to stop talking to me. I don’t exist! I’m no more real than Paul Elam’s ‘gay friend.’”
Andybob added this to the debate:
Yes, that’s right, he’s saying Smooth is being a “fag” in order to score with women. Clearly we have a brilliant mind at work here.
Several comments later, Iron John, a man apparently oblivious to irony, weighed in with this gem:
On Reddit, after someone pointed out the homophobia in the comments, Elam responded with “comment mine much?”
I’m pretty sure you don’t get to complain about “comment mining” for homophobia when 1) you’re the guy behind the site and 2) you’re one of the ones shouting “fag.”
Notice that Zorro’s original comment got an equal number of upvotes and downvotes. Then Elam jumped in to give the homophobia his seal of approval. After that, it was nothing but upvotes for those using or approving of the homophobic slur.
Calling a dude a “fag” on the internet: Men’s Rights Activism at its finest!
The Punch and Punch Show: Men’s Rights Redditors fantasize about how much easier life would be if they were gay
God made Punch and Judy, Not Punch and Punch
So the other day some of the fellas on the Men’s Rights subreddit were having a strange little conversation. One Men’s Rights Redditor posted a clip from Bill Burr, in which the comedian complained that when his girlfriend hit him, he couldn’t hit her back without getting himself into a lot of trouble.
Instead of pointing his fellows to, I don’t know, resources for male victims of domestic abuse, the OP joked “This Is Why I Wish That I Was Sexually Attracted to Men.”
Yep, that’s right. He wants to date other men so, if the need arises, he can punch them.
Naturally, this being Reddit, other straight dudes jumped in with their own fantasies about how much easier life would be if they were gay. After all, jacKofKats pointed out, dating a guy would mean you could play video games with the very same person you have sex with, something obviously impossible in heterosexual relationships.
Oneiorosgrip agreed with the original poster that life would be much simpler and easier if guys could hit their mates:
Dolanduckeroo expressed envy towards his gay friends, who apparently lead lives of ease and endless zipless fucks, all the while being appreciated for who they truly are.
A few actual gay men wandered into the discussion, hoping to inject a bit of realism, pointing out (among other things) that gay men actually face something called “homophobia” — look it up if you haven’t heard of it — pretty much every day of their lives. Naturally, they got fewer upvotes than the “wish I were gay” fantasizers.
Thank You, Hater: An utterly charming response to Internet trolls, in song and dance!
Here’s an utterly charming response to internet trolls – in song and dance! Thanks, Clever Pie and Isabel Fay! And thanks, Jill Filipovic of Feministe, for passing on the link.
Unlike the videos from Armageddon1115 I posted earlier today, this one is really worth watching.
You can find the full lyrics on YouTube; here are some of my favorite bits:
Well hello friend Mister Insightful
Thank you for your comment on my little Youtube clip!
Most people say you’re cruel and spiteful,
But you’re right, how do I sleep at night? I am a massive prick. …
Some might say you are a…
Sexually aggressive, racist, homophobe, misogynistic,
Cowardly, illitterate, waste of human skin,
Sexually aggressive, racist, homophobe, misogynistic,
Cowardly, iliterat, waste of human skin,
But I say: thank you beautiful stranger. …
I’m really sure that if I met you
You probably wouldn’t rape me like you promised that you would
We are like “that”; I really get you
You’re right about that laughing kid, he is a total “cnut”.
You wished me cancer and misspelled “cancer”
But I know that it’s a metaphor. You hope that I will grow,
Just like the tumour you hoped would kill me
Inside the tits on which you said you’d also like a go.
Pure joy.
And let me offer my own personal thanks to all the Man Boobz haters! Hey, “guy who posts on The Spearhead and elsewhere as Nugganu,” every time you tell me you hope I “get … anally raped one day. for real, yeah,” in comments from this IP address, and this one, it gives me yet more reason to continue on, mocking and exposing you complete douchewaffles.
New Men’s Rights Posters Fight Misandry with Racism, Homophobia, and Giant Trotskyist Fists [UPDATED]
Even North Korea is better at propaganda than the Men’s Rights Movement. Text reads: “Come to North Korea! We’ve got, like, shitloads of fish.” (Note: I do not actually know Korean.)
It’s sort of reassuring how bad Men’s Rightsers are at communicating with those outside their tiny movement. I should amend that: how bad they are at communicating what they want to communicate — that is, that they are the 21st-century version of the heroic and in many ways successful civil rights movements of the late 20th century. What they tend to communicate instead is what they’d rather the world not see: how blinkered and reactionary and hateful so many of them really are.
Browsing through the Men’s Rights subreddit last night, I ran across a batch of graphics one MRA had prepared for other MRAs to freely use, whether as online graphics, dorm room decoration, or posters to wheatpaste on the nearest family courts building. While avoiding the hysterical misogyny of so many of the graphics up on the Artistry Against Misandry website we looked at recently, CAGeorge’s posters reveal a bit more about himself and the MRM than he perhaps intends them to. Take this poster, ostensibly a call to “resist feminist bullying.” How exactly do you resist such bullying? Apparently, with a giant fist.
Huh. Your movement is known for its violent rhetoric, for downplaying and whitewashing domestic violence against women by pretending that DV affects men and women equally, for promulgating a sort of false-rape-allegation hysteria in no way proportionate to the actual extent of false-rape allegations. In some circles, it’s labeled, fairly or unfairly, as “the abusers lobby.” Do you really think putting this fist on this poster is going to help?
Apparently not. Apparently that fist ISN’T GIGANTIC ENOUGH. Meet MEGA FIST:
So, yeah. Also, FYI, that particular version of the old clenched-fist graphic has been used by the far-left International Socialist Organization (ISO) for several decades. Take a look at the little ISO fist to the right here. Same fist. You may want to switch that out, dudes, lest you inadvertently convert potential MRAs to Trotskyism.
And while I have to give CAGeorge a few points for avoiding the crass misogyny of Artistry Against Misandry, he doesn’t do quite as well avoiding racism and homophobia. Hence this poster, apparently an attempt to scare potential false accusers by suggesting they could end up sharing a cell with a scary and probably dark-skinned dyke.
Naturally, CAGeorge’s artisty won mostly plaudits from the Men’s Rights redditors who stopped by to look and comment.
EDITED TO ADD: Woah. Strike that last sentence. Returning to r/menrights I see that a real, critical discussion of the flyers has erupted. Many of the regulars are unhappy with various aspects of CAGeorge’s choices. Numerous commenters are critical of the fist imagery, including ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit’s mods, who objects in one highly upvoted comment. One person even mentions the ISO!
Our old pal Sigil1 (a.k.a. the legendary banned Man Boobz commenter Eoghan) is especially critical of the “roommate” poster, and for a good reason: that it essentially threatens prison rape for false accusers. (He doesn’t mention the racism or homophobia.) But he still can’t help but blame the posters on a conspiracy of evil “false flag” feminists trying to make the MRM look bad.
Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, naturally, thinks the posters are fine and dandy.
CAGeorge, meanwhile, defends his poor choices. Here he is dealing with criticism of the “roommate” poster:
The bit about “nullification” is of course a reference to Elam’s infamous suggestion that MRAs should undermine the legal system by voting “not guilty” in trials involving men charged with rape, “even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”
Still, this is a real discussion. If the Men’s Rights movement has any chance at all of transforming itself into something really resembling a real progressive movement, it’s going to need to have a lot more discussions like this — and those who really do want to improved the lives of men instead of simply demonizing women will need to make clear that Elam and his ideological comrades are no longer welcome in the movement.
EDITED TO ADD, PART 2: Now the legendarily cloddish MRA videoblogger Bernard Chapin has made a video attacking the posters and the dude who made them. He’s not worried about the violent imagery, or the racism, or the homophobia — as I pointed out recently, he is himself a bit of a homophobe. Nope. He’s mad about the use of evil leftist imagery, and accuses the maker of the posters of being a sneaky Marxist infiltrator trying to co-opt the MRM with evil Marxist symbolism.
Gosh. Paul Elam said he liked the graphics. Is he a secret Marxist infiltrator too?
MRAs would rather complain about “male disposability” than work to enable women to serve in combat
Men’s Rights Activists regularly complain that it is mostly men who serve in the armed forces, and that it is mostly male soldiers who are killed and injured in service to their country in wartime. MRAs also complain that, in the United States, only men have to sign up for the draft – though this is more of a formality than anything else, as the draft has been dead for decades and there is virtually no chance of it being resurrected any time soon.
MRAs love to cite the dominance of men in the armed forces as a prime example of what they call “male disposability,” and somehow manage to blame feminists for it all.
But it’s not feminists who are trying to keep women from becoming soldiers, or serving in combat. While some MRAs support the idea of women serving in the army, and having to register for the draft the same as men do, many others scoff at the very notion of women as soldiers, mocking their alleged female “weakness” and in some cases denigrating the service of women now in the armed forces as being equivalent to attending “day care camp.” (Not exactly.) These MRAs may complain that men bear the brunt of the costs of war. But they don’t actually want women to serve.
Not that it makes much of a difference, because the MRAs who do supposedly want women to share the same responsibilities as men aren’t doing shit about it. You know who is? Feminists. The National Organization for Women, while opposing the draft, has long argued that if registration is required of men, it should also be required of women. NOW has also opposed the ban on female soliders serving in combat. (Not that it’s easy to draw a clear line between combat and non-combat positions on the contemporary battlefields.)
Meanwhile, a group called the Molly Pitcher Project, made up of University of Virginia law students and headed by feminist law professor Anne Coughlin, is assisting two female soldiers who are now suing the Pentagon in an attempt to lift the combat ban.
Do you want to know who is opposing them – aside from the Pentagon’s lawyers? Take a look at some of the comments posted in response to a Los Angeles Times article on the lawsuit. Note: The quotes below are pretty egregious; some deal with military rape in a really offensive way. (Thanks to Pecunium for pointing me to them.)
These aren’t “cherry-picked” from hundreds of comments; these are the bulk of the comments that were left on the article.
Are any of these commenters MRAs? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly their misogynistic “logic” is virtually identical to that I’ve seen from misogynist MRAs opposed to women serving in combat. One thing they are clearly not is feminist.
If MRAs, or at least some of them, truly want a world in which men and women share equally in the responsibilities of military service (and both have equal opportunties for military leadership), they need to challenge the misogynists — within their movement and without — who argue that women simply aren’t fit for the battlefield. And they need to support the feminists who are actually trying to make a difference — instead of standing on the sidelines crying foul.
I don’t hold out much hope that this will ever happen. MRAs are much too enamored with their fantasies of male martyrhood.
A Voice for Men: Say no to homophobia! And then watch this hilarious video bashing lesbians!
Well, this is … interesting. So JohnTheOther has plopped out another rambling diatribe about evil feminists. This time he accuses them not only of “attacking male sexuality” but also (if I’m reading him correctly) of being a bunch of evil homophobes jealous that some men don’t want to have sex with women. You read this and tell me what you think he’s implying here:
Male sexuality is of course both demonized and treated as a form of predation, but also strictly limited to a narrow set of acceptable expressions. Outside of sexual identities which place men in positions to benefit women as sexual gate-keepers, masculine sexuality is generally condemned.
JTO would love to compare these alleged gay-man-hating feminists to the proudly gay-male-affirming Men’s Rights Movement. There’s just one problem: As even JTO has to force himself to admit, there are more than a few homophobic dudes lurking around in the Men’s Rights movement. As JTO acknowledges:
[T]here is a thread of opinion with a growing currency among some MRAs which rejects the legitimacy of men whose self identity and sexuality is gay or bisexual, or I suppose, transsexual.
JTO doesn’t like this, and says so:
[There] are men (and women) whose sexuality, either chosen or not, doesn’t conform to an acceptable standard – and some within the MRM would demonize them. Gentlemen and ladies – this is nothing short of stupid.
At what point does who an individual finds sexually attractive diminish their value as a human? How is it that a man whose preference doesn’t include vagina becomes less of a man? Conversely, are we going to pretend the sexual preferences of our female colleagues matter in the context of partnership in the fight for the human rights of men and boys?
So: JohnTheOther has explicitly decided to speak up in favor of “the gay agenda.” (Yes, that’s the phrase he used.) And he’s even included lesbians in the deal – something allegedly pro-gay MRAs often have trouble doing – even though he sort of suggests at the end that he’s only willing to accept lesbians who are also MRAs.
But, hey, baby steps, right?
Well, John, if you really want to toss the homophobes out of the Men’s Rights movement, you’re going to have to start with A Voice for Men itself.
If you go to read JTO’s whole post over on AVFM, you’ll see a couple of “featured videos” in the sidebar from longtime AVFM friend and contributor Bernard Chapin. One of them bears the intriguing title “Feminist Professor Gloats Over Lesbian Chic.” The description, presumably written by AVFM head honcho Paul Elam, reads:
Bernard’s on a roll here with this one. And you will be rolling to [sic] as he delivers another thorough fisking, Inferno style.
Watch the video, here or there, or as much of it as you can stand. As you’ll see, it’s basically eight minutes of gratingly “humorous” lesbian bashing from good old Bern – whose preferred term for “lesbian,” incidentally, is “lesbobo.” (Evidently adding an extra “bo” to the old slur “lesbo” is hilarious.)
Chapin has produced more than 1200 videos; this is one of the two that AVFM has chosen to feature.
You want to stand up to homophobia, John? Take down that video. Apologize for hosting it. Apologize for featuring it. Demand that Chapin apologize for it — or kick him to the curb.
Meanwhile, AVFM is helping the guy behind the website Artistry Against Misandry publicize and raise money for an upcoming event; Elam himself says he’s already sent along a hundred dollars. Here are some examples of the sort of “artistry” that’s featured on the site:
This second graphic is not only homophobic but confused: Chaz Bono is a trans man, not a lesbian.
Speaking of transphobia, AAM also hosts several videos by “Creativebrother,” one of which is this not-hot transphobic mess:
John, I suggest you ask your boss at AVFM to get his money back from Artistry Against Misandry. Because, here’s the thing: if you actively support hate like this, people might just get the impression you’re a hate site.
EDITED TO ADD: In the comments, Elam proudly announces his own support of the “gay agenda” as well. Well, with 0.1% of it.
I don’t like most gay activists very much, and I oppose 99.9% of what passes as gay activism, but I don’t think it is very smart to forget that part of the reason they were led astray is because most “normal” men never gave them the dignity of being regarded as a man.
Forget gay marriage, forget bullying, forget AIDS: apparently the only real issue for gay men is evil feminist ladies calling them “fags” for not wanting to have sex with them.
Elam also has a most interesting explanation of homophobia, at least against gay men:
Gay men are bashed, when all is said and done, because they are not of utilitarian value to women, and because they are perceived as not having enough strength to be of utilitarian value to the elites.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
What about homophobia against lesbians? That’s easy: “lesbobos” are just naturally ugly and hilarious.
