Category Archives: the c-word
Off-topic: Roxanne Shante, meet Azealia Banks
I‘m not feeling the whole “reading blogs by assholes and making a post about it” thing at the moment (because it involves more “reading blogs by assholes” than I care to at present), so let’s kick it old school and new school with (respectively) Roxanne Shante …
and Azealia Banks
A little gender experiment confirms that Reddit is full of douchebags
Now that's what I call a bridegroom.
So someone on Reddit did a little experiment that confirmed what we already know: that Reddit is overflowing with misogynist douchebags. Here’s the experimenter explaining her somewhat casual experimental protocol:
I noticed after two months as my female username I was constantly having to defend my opinions. I mean constantly. I would post something lighthearted, and have people commenting taking my comment literally and telling me I was dumb or I didn’t understand xyz. People were so eager to talk incredibly rudely and condescendingly to me. People were downright hateful and it made me consider leaving.
Then I decided to experiment with usernames and came up with an obviously male name. While people still disagreed with me which is to be expected, I had more people come to my defense when I had a different opinion and absolutely no hateful or condescending comments. I am completely shocked at how different I am treated since having a male username. I am not saying Reddit is sexist, well kind of yes, but I think it’s really interesting and thought that some other girls on here would want to get male usernames and see the difference for themselves.
She posted this in TwoXChromosomes, a subreddit devoted to women and women’s issues that is regularly overrun with angry MRA dudes and an assortment of FemRAs. This time the MRA squad didn’t take over the discussion, and numerous 2XCers reported experiences similar to that of the OP.
earthpeesfire noted:
I had a feminine user name years ago. Fuck that. It was like having a target on my back.
cantstopthe tried to duplicate the experiment on a smaller scale:
Just wanted to say that I made an alt yesterday with a female name, and continue to post the kind of things I normally post under this account. And today I was told I should be raped.
That has NEVER happened in all my 4 years of being on this site with various neutral names.
misscastaway also tried posting with a clearly female name:
I just tried posting on an discussion from this account. Immediately an insult including the word cunt and remarks on how I’m making a fool out of myself.
Might be a coincidence but when posting from my regular account (which is very gender neutral) that I use for discussions related to science, fitness, books etc I have never received this kind of behaviour. Not even when it turned out someone knew more about the subject and I was wrong/short in my knowledge. Then I was given another point of view, with a source - that was it.
I guess I’ll keep using those accounts in parallel now just to see if this was just by chance or if it really makes such a difference.
fatchick400 reported on the results of a similar experiment:
I created this account a few days ago to comment on some fat-hate, and have actually found it really interesting to see reddit from a different point of view.
The biggest surprise for me is the difference in how fat women are treated vs fat men. There is so much more hatred towards the fat women. A lot of people even refer to these women as “it”, completely negating their gender all together.
Meanwhile in the posts about fat men there are a few hateful comments, but they’re mostly full of light hearted jokes. In a few posts where the guys were obviously morbidly obese, barely anyone commented on the guys’ weight at all. Yet in posts with woman who are maybe 200lbs , mocking her weight always seems to be the main focus of conversation.
twofish added her experience to the pile of anecdotal evidence:
Most people on reddit assume I am male until I make it a point to say otherwise. More often than not, once it’s discovered that I own a vagina I’m no longer taken seriously, my opinions are belittled, and a slough of sexist and misogynist jokes/accusations get thrown my way.
I love Reddit for many reasons but it is one of THE most hostile places on the internet to be a woman.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, meanwhile, the locals largely dismissed the experiment as unscientific and biased. As DavidByron put it:
Just seems like someone who set out to “prove” her own biases. She was biased to begin with, she ran the “experiment” in a biased way, interpreted the results in a biased way and then presented them to support her initial assumptions.
It’s the usual princess feminism which says men have it easy and women have it hard even while the exact opposite is happening. Why wouldn’t she say which usernames she used in her “test” so others can look at her methodology? Of course it’s not serious but then that’s the point.
Others explained that they weren’t really sexist because they’re such earnest fanboys of GirlWritesWhat, a woman who is able to bypass the usual MRA misogyny by pandering to the misogynists’ fantasy of male martyrdom.
The woman who posted about the experiment in the first place has now popped in to the r/menrights thread, and has (very politely) suggested to Mr. Byron that he try the experiment himself. I guess we’ll see what happens.
The Men’s Rights subreddit works on its image problem — by reaffirming MRA’s sacred right to call women “cunts.”
What’s the best way forward for the Men’s Rights movement today? About the only thing I’ve been able to conclude from this discussion in the Men’s Rights subreddit is that it will more than likely involve heavy use of the word “cunt.” Men’s Rights redditors sure do love the word “cunt.” (See here for the rest of this particular discussion.)
This next bit follows directly from the above:
Yep, you heard it right:
To be classified as a hate group by such a large organization is the first step to gaining wider recognition.
If that’s the case, Men’s Rights Redditors, why are you so mad at the SPLC? Why aren’t you sending it thank-you notes?
Also, just a point of fact: The SPLC report didn’t actually classify the Men’s Rights subreddit as a hate group. It just pointed out that r/mensrights is full of misogynists. But apparently a lot of Men’s Rights Redditors want to take that whole hate group thing and run with it. You go, boys (and sometimes, oddly, girls)!
Gucci Little Piggy: Sandra Fluke is a lesbian pirate because one of her fingers is longer than the other
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Leave it to the manosphere to further elevate the national discourse about Sandra Fluke. On Gucci Little Piggy, a blog loosely aligned with the alt-right/racist/PUA wing of the manosphere, blogger Chuck Rudd suggests that Rush Limbaugh might have been wrong to call Fluke a slut. Sounds good,eh? Not when you hear the, er, reasoning behind it:
I think the term “slut” is too arbitrary to have much meaning in a political context, especially when we don’t actually know anything about the so-called slut’s sexual history. It doesn’t fit Sandra Fluke anyway as we don’t know for sure that she’s heterosexual.
Go on.
Fluke is not a “slut”, nor is she a “good citizen” which is what President Obama called her in a press conference held today. Based upon readily observable behavior and on her beliefs about what she and her favorite groups have a right to grab from tax payers and employers, it’s best to call her what she is: a pirate
Uh, what?
Apparently, in Chuck’s world, putative lesbians who suggest that insurance should pay for birth control that they personally don’t need to prevent babies, though they or people they know might need it to treat other medical conditions, are pirates.
Later in the post, Chuck links to a review of a book that suggests many pirates engaged in sodomy. Which is evidently proof in his mind that lesbians are pirates, or at least that it is hilarious to call them pirates.
Anyway, the best part of the piece is how Chuck, using the magic of SCIENCE, proves that Fluke is gay:
[P]eople who have a longer ring finger (4d) than index finger (2d) have more testosterone and, some argue, a higher sex drive.
Pointing to a news photograph that appears to show that Ms. Fluke does indeed have a long ring finger, Chuck concludes:
her ring finger is quite a bit longer than her index. It’s almost as long as her middle finger. In general, a low 2d:4d ratio in women indicates a greater proclivity towards homosexuality or bisexuality and greater tendency towards aggressiveness and assertiveness. So, yeah, pirate fits.
Thanks, Chuck.
Most of the commenters to his article seem to agree with his basic thesis.
Stickman writes:
forget the fingers… shes got strait up MAN HANDS. But look on the bright side, if she survives the up coming second dark ages, I’m sure she will do a fine job of pulling a plow.
Note: The “coming second dark ages” is a familiar trope among manospherians; the idea is that men will get so fed up with the gynofascist matriarchy we evidently all live in today that they will stop working, civilization will crumble, and the ladies will be put in their proper place, behind pulling plows.
SOBL1 adds:
As a fellow Cornellian, my guess is lesbian. Cornell has a decent les population.It also speaks more to a les to demand free birth control as a hand out from the government speaking on behalf of all women when she has no shot of getting pregnant. That’s just the thing lesbians like to do: consider their opinions the worldview of all “womyn”. At a minimum, she was a LUG [Lesbian Until Graduation]. Her face and hair are so masculine, she could pass for a male supporting character in “All the President’s Men”.
Did he mention he went to CORNELL?
One free-thinking fellow actually challenges Chuck’s analysis. Nick digger writes:
This finger length analysis from candid photos is nonsense. There are too many knuckle-bends in all directions, combined with skewed camera position, to get an accurate measurement. There has to be some standard for this, such as hands pressed flat against a flat surface, with all fingers together, or each finger extending in a straight line from its source carpal (or metacarpal, whatever it is).
Having said that, she looks like a fat, ugly cunt — which is what Rush should have called her, as it does not imply sluttiness. He’s entitled, because libs call him a fat ugly cunt all the time.
Such is the nature of the discussion amongst some of the internet’s most steadfast advocates for the rights of men.
Chuck himself adds a few parting thoughts in a comment suggesting that Fluke’s biggest crime was that she didn’t ask for birth control coverage nicely enough:
When you ask for something from someone you don’t demand it and then demonize someone who doesn’t cave in to your demands. You ask and the other person chooses whether to reciprocate. All of this is akin to someone asking a stranger for a hitch across town and then screaming and yelling when rebuffed
It’s true. In the past, activists have always been extremely polite about their demands requests. You may recall the famous anti-war slogan: “Heck no, we would prefer not to go.” The “Excuse us, fellas, but we would also like to be able to walk around at night” marches. And of course, Martin Luther King’s famous, “Guys, would any of you like to hear about this dream I had” speech.
All Chuck and his friends are asking is that fat ugly dyke cunts stop being so darn rude when they call on insurance companies to provide certain kinds of medical coverage. Is that really too much to ask?
-
I’d better put that blinking
gif here, just in case.
Men’s Rights Redditors to Rebecca Watson: How dare you say we hate women, you cunt!
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So the other day, the atheist blogger Rebecca Watson, aka Skepchick, had this little conversation on Twitter:
Watson, you may recall, got herself onto the Men’s Rights radar a few months back, after a brief comment she made in a podcast — suggesting that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea for a guy to hit on woman he’s never spoken to before while the two of them are alone in an elevator at 4 AM – somehow turned into a Big Fucking Thing on the Internet, because how dare she say such a thing, it’s creep-shaming, she must hate men, bla bla bla.
So, anyhoo, one Men’s Rights Reddit noticed this little Twitter exchange, and posted it to the Men’s Rights subreddit. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. MRAs hating women? How dare she suggest such a thing!
Here are some of the things that assorted Men’s Rights Redditors posted in response, to remind us all that the Men’s Rights movement isn’t all about shitting on women. Let’s start with this lovely rebuttal, boasting nearly 60 net upvotes:
This comment inspired a long and winding discussion of the word “cunt,” and why it’s like totally ok to use it all the time, because in England the UK people call men “cunts” as well.
Some got a little carried away:
This little exchange came with a side order of irony:
Speaking of fantasy, here’s a strange bit of paranoia, which nonetheless drew upvotes from the very same people who are outraged that Watson was a bit creeped out by a dude she didn’t know asking her to come to his hotel room at 4 AM:
And here’s still more evidence that MRAs, despite their many egregious flaws, do at least have vivid imaginations:
Some other comments, all of which got at least a few upvotes from the MR regulars:
Let’s end with this eloquent plea for people to not give a shit if MRAs hate women:
The folks in the Men’s Rights subreddit are currently debating whether or not to change the subreddit’s slogan, which is currently: “Mens’ Rights: Earning Scorn from Bigoted Feminists and White Knights Since 2008.”
So let me humbly suggest:
Mens’ Rights: Like it’s even relevant if mens rights is anti women in regard to if mens rights is a movement about addressing mens issues.
Or the even punchier:
Men’s Rights: i’m tired of not using the term “cunt”.
MRAs, you’re welcome.
