I can't help it. This is the image that pops into my head when I read a lot of the comments from MRAs on this blog. So much anger, so little sense, so much ... well, so much weird, and sometimes bizarrely specific, sexual imagery. Eww. Double eww.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
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Oh please! You are complaining about angry, senseless comments? This is the internet. What do you expect? Such comments are not confined to MRAs. You can find just as much idiocy and anger on Pandagon, Feministing, and lots of the other blogs on your “Friends” list.
ReplyDeleteBut, you are overstating your point, anyway.
You have 7 recent posts on your front page. There are a total of 89 comments (not including this one).
Two posts have NO comments (unless you include this one).
The shaming post had 15 comments: 4 were from you and your brother, 2 were in response to your brother’s derail of the thread. The one comment from Jumpin was stupid, but I honestly cannot tell if he was responding to you, or some of the previous comments. Complete non-sequitur. And, I have no idea if he (she?) is an MRA.
The false rape debate had six comments and there did not seem to be any ad hominems or anger in it.
The Feminist diagram post had four comments: two by you, one by a feminist and one by Prole cat, who tried to explain the diagram (not very well, in my opinion, but without anger).
The Nightmare post had 9 comments and they did not make much sense. Basically, this post, like the planet of the Apes post and the current post were pot-shots at MRAs and did not have much content and got little response. (By the way, did you notice that the Nightmare picture has a math theme? There is an “XYZ,” one skirt has “calculus” written on it (I believe) and I believe there is a diagram of the Pythagorean Theorem on another. Was that part of your point? That MRAs are bad at math?)
The only post to get much of any attention was the one on Paul Elam. Basically it was an attack on his style, and there were a lot of comments back and forth between you and him, several comments about your spam folder, and some very substantive comments. There was not a lot of substance to the post (except to complain about his style), but I do like that Orwell essay.
Basically, I am not impressed that your blog is at all exceptional when it comes to bad comments. But, my main criticism is the lack of content. Of the 7 posts, only the shaming one and the Elam one had much to talk about. Don’t just post a picture, make a snarky comment, and expect much traffic. Put a little effort into it and you might actually have a blog people would like to read. I just found it recently and think the most valuable things on it are your friends and enemies list. But, I don’t think you want your blog to be known as a good place to find links to blogs that are actually worth reading.
-Jut
"So much anger, so little sense"
ReplyDeleteMr Futrelle has just given us a real-life example of projection.
So where's your substance to this claim? Please give us a detailed explanation about this, David.
ReplyDeleteYou ask Paul to provide substance, now you are getting called out on it.
Cough it mangina boy
Substance to WHAT claim?
ReplyDeleteI respond to substantive comments. There's not much to respond to when the substance of your comment is "cough it mangina boy."
To what you claim from the comments, you are not making any sense. However except for the bizarrely specific, sexual imagery example.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how you use the word " a lot". You cherry pick one example and brand it on most post on this blog.
The fact is my little mangina boy; because you have no substance to argue with the MRAs on here to begin with, you come up with cheap shots like this one.
You have no steam; you have nothing to debate the gender issues. Instead, you make little pansy stunts like this.
Come up with a real debate about the MRA claims you disagree with.
Your blog is intended to attack MRAs, yet there is not one thing in here that refutes any claim MRAs make about gender issues.
Pathetic, isn't it?
No wonder why your blog is not popular. Most people see this as a snoozefest
Jut, your comment was caught by the spam filter; I un-spammed it.
ReplyDeleteYes, there are plenty of un-angry comments on the blog; when they are substantive, like Daran's comments, I respond to them substantively.
There are also a giant number of comments that are crazy and hostile and violent. I have rarely, perhaps never, seen comments by feminists on feminist or MRA blogs that reach anything close to this level of vitriol. If you know of some, post a link -- though I imagine it would be trivial to find a much larger number of more vitriolic posts on MRA blogs in response.
The picture of the creepy women dancing was posted because it was a picture of creepy women dancing. That post was what is called "a joke." Sometimes I like to make jokes.
Ah, Nick. When trying to take the high road, and to defend your colleagues against general claims of douchebaggery, it helps if you don't call your opponent a "mangina" or a "pansy."
ReplyDeleteIt also kind of undermines your high-mindedness when you try to round up a gang of internet thugs to give me "as much grief [as] you can."
http://antimisandry.com/feminist-misandry/new-anti-mra-blog-disgusting-mangina-33765.html
The sole purpose of this blog is to troll MRAs, as evidenced by the fact that David is trolling the most popular MRA sites in order to direct us here. Every time we comment, we are feeding the troll.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose is to counter some of the idiocy of the men's rights movement, which many people such of myself have been exhausted by. It is such a relief to see someone calling the movement on its bullshit.
ReplyDeleteMen's rights is never going to get anywhere if it doesn't disavow its fanatics.
If that were true than David would actually try to counter the substance of these "bullshit" arguments instead of taking cheap shots at writing styles and terminology and going out of his way to goad MRAs into leaving angry comments. Obvious troll is obvious.
ReplyDeleteColdfire, my blog is a week and a half old. I have written numerous substantive posts and comments. (And some lighter stuff.) There is a lot of bullshit in the MRM to rebut and slowly but surely I will rebut it all. Patience, grasshopper. I am just getting started.
ReplyDelete"Men's rights is never going to get anywhere if it doesn't disavow its fanatics."
ReplyDeleteAnd where would feminists be today if THEY had adopted such a philosophy?
e.g.
"All men care about is watching football and drinking beer and never pay us enough attention!"
-as opposed to-
"All men are incestuous rapists, wife beaters, pedophiles, stalkers, stranglers, serial killers and zombies who can only be killed by cutting their bodies into a half dozen pieces and ritually burying each piece in a different parallel universe lest the pieces self assemble."
evilwhitemaleetc, I think you may have confused feminism with an acid flashback.
ReplyDelete"Men's rights is never going to get anywhere if it doesn't disavow its fanatics."
ReplyDeleteThat's laughable when you think about how people like Valerie Solanas, Andrea Dworkin, and Robin Morgan...to name a few...are feminists icons in the movement. How did they get their fame? Because many feminists supported them enough to reach that standard. If not, these lunatics would never be heard of. They would be another random feminist next door who not many people know.
The sad thing is, being a feminist; you can get away with the most sexist BS. But if a MRA displayed the same level of sexism as the feminists mentioned above, they would never make it into media. They would be denied access. They would never reach such fame. They would never have enough support to publish books and sell them and so on and on.
"Coldfire, my blog is a week and a half old. I have written numerous substantive posts and comments. (And some lighter stuff.) There is a lot of bullshit in the MRM to rebut and slowly but surely I will rebut it all. Patience, grasshopper. I am just getting started."
If there is a lot of BS to refute, you can easily expose it all at the click of a finger. You've had more than plenty of time to show us how wrong we all are.
The fact that you bothered to make a blog while remaining here for the past couple of weeks is very telling. It shows that there is a problem for you to find something to refute with your whole anti-MRA stance.
I know a troll blog when I see it, and the fact that you started yours around the same time this year as when Hattie started a troll blog last year is not lost on me, nor is the fact that you are employing similar methods of advertisement. Her blog lasted about 2 months, let's see how long YOU last...
ReplyDeleteLOL, the guy in the middle looks like he's slowly jerking off. And the guy behind him too.
ReplyDeleteOMG, the picture is so much worse if you imagine that it's a group masturbation session. Which I guess is what you were implying with the reference to "weird and bizarre sexual imagery"... I'm a bit slow on the uptake this morning. :)
"If there is a lot of BS to refute, you can easily expose it all at the click of a finger. You've had more than plenty of time to show us how wrong we all are."
ReplyDeleteAnd here is one of the biggest problems with the MRM in a nutshell: people who think they can refute others' arguments with the touch of a button, by referring to some dubious statistics they happened to run across on a random MRA blog, or by simply asserting things without evidence.
I'm a little old fashioned. If I'm going to cite a research paper, I like to actually read it first. I like to also read papers that present different views from one another, instead of simply citing whatever I run across first that happens to agree with me. Given that there are a lot of papers out there on any given subject (rape, domestic violence, etc), sometimes this can actually take a little bit of time. Were I in a big hurry, I could simply pound out a post about, say, domestic violence based on the dozen or so papers I've read on the subject so far. But I like to be thorough, so I won't.
While I work on these posts, I will also post my thoughts on other subjects. This is my blog, and I post what I want to post, on my own schedule.
If "exposing" your opponents is really as simple as clicking a button, why don't you click a few buttons and start your own blog?
Also, Nick, Valarie Solanas is no feminist icon. She's a weird, crazy footnote in the history of feminism, an example of a crazy person who couched her craziness in the language of feminism, and who is only talked about today by MRAs and other antifeminists. If you actually knew even a tiny bit about feminism, you would know this.
ReplyDeleteAndrea Dworkin was a feminist icon to SOME feminists. She was also critiqued soundly by other feminists, and today her ideas are seen as anachronistic and extreme by most feminists.
If you want to critique feminism today, critique feminism today. Don't drag out the same few names from the 1970s and hold feminists of today responsible for decades-old ideas they don't actually believe in. I don't hold you responsible for sexist quotes from antifeminists from the 1970s.
@Jut Gory
ReplyDeleteMost people have what I like to call "E-Tourette's syndrome"...
@DAVID:
"And here is one of the biggest problems with the MRM in a nutshell: people who think they can refute others' arguments with the touch of a button, by referring to some dubious statistics they happened to run across on a random MRA blog, or by simply asserting things without evidence."
Let me know what statistics you want refuted, I can provide you with links to VALID government institutions...
I am guessing that you will NOT take me up on this.
CHICKEN!!!!
Way too many feminist statistics have been refuted.
If you like feminism so much, may I recommend you read Christina Hoff Sommer's "Who Stole Feminism"... She is a feminist.
It is in fact a very revealing book.
You really need to free yourself from your current mindset David.
You are only hurting yourself :)
P.S. Esthar Vilar's book, "The Manipulated Man" is also an excellent book.
ReplyDelete@Marissa
ReplyDeletethe picture is so much worse if you imagine that it's a group masturbation session
Project much, Marissa? You look like you need a minute alone with "Mr. Finger". Knock yourself out.
@Little Ms. David
If you want to critique feminism today, critique feminism today.
Stop using the old "It's up to you to learn about feminism" trope. It don't work anymore. People are critiquing all of feminism, from day one. And all of its mangina enablers. Deal with it and eunuch up.
@Coldfire
Every time we comment, we are feeding the troll.
Yes, I see what you mean, but that would only be unfortunate if feeding the troll was actually disruptive to an otherwise interesting and intelligent blog.
Scarecrow: I'm not sure that a random statistics fight would really prove much of anything. I tend to like looking at stats in context, and to do it in posts rather than comments, so people don't have to wade through endless posts on why I'm a mangina first, before getting to some random statistics that have nothing to do with the topic of the post. .
ReplyDeleteBut I will go ahead and rebut the statistics on your web page:
http://www.rip-factor.com/formen/index.html
Oh, wait, there's nothing there.
@David.
ReplyDeleteOK, give me a statistic "in context" - do it in a post - I'll refute it with a valid statistic.
About my web-site:
Interesting that you know about it - especially since I have only given you information on my blog... Are you one of those turds pulling a Doctor Jeckyl and Mister Hyde act? How did you discover my site?
However: I took that section down, and moved it to my blog.
A set of statistics can be found here:
http://men-factor.blogspot.com/2010/08/american-government-discriminates.html
and some more here:
http://men-factor.blogspot.com/2010/08/american-culture-discriminates-against.html
P.S. about the people calling you a mangina - I'll agree that they are wasting space here.
Let me know if you want more links to other statistics - they are all on my blog now.
I would be happy to provide them.
Do you expect this to come at this life time? heh heh heh heh
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to get into a statistics fight in comments here, especially with a batch of stats you've simply copypastaed from another web site. Have you read a single one of the sources for these stats? No. Could you tell me anything about the data sources, the research methods, etc etc?
ReplyDeleteI mean, I can pull random stats out of a hat as easily as you can, but all that proves is that we can both copy and paste things from other web sites.
I will address many of the issues dealt with in these stats in future posts. Random stat battles in comments are really a waste of time for everyone.
David:
ReplyDelete"Valarie Solanas is ... a weird, crazy footnote in the history of feminism, an example of a crazy person who couched her craziness in the language of feminism, and who is only talked about today by MRAs and other antifeminists."
Solanas is a bit more than a footnote. She's frequently covered within Women Studies courses, hardly bastions of antifeminism, She's also sometimes chosen by feminists as a topic of discussion. In this thread, the poster seems to think that she's a "bad feminist" for not having read the SCUM Manifesto before, hardly a typical reaction to a "footnote".
A comment by Yeltsine sums up the ensuing discussion:
The text [of the SCUM Manifesto] is garbage, and the OP’s question should be answered with the simple statement that people like Solanas obviously aren’t representative of the broader feminist movement ... Instead, I see people trying to justify it, trying to talk about how they “get it”, trying to paint her in a sympathetic light.
Indeed, the thread seems to be roughly evenly split between those expressing revulsion at the Manifesto, and those defending it.
Nick:
ReplyDelete"...people like Valerie Solanas, Andrea Dworkin, and Robin Morgan...to name a few...are feminists icons in the movement. How did they get their fame? Because many feminists supported them enough to reach that standard."
While David understated Solanas' significance to the movement, you greatly overstate it. Solanas isn't often talked about by feminists, and when she is, opinion is split between those repulsed by her, and those who try to argue that her writings were satire. No feminist I have ever read actually endorsed what she did, or supported a literal interpretation of what she said. I wish I could say the same was true about Lepine or Sodini within the men's movement. Unfortunately it isn't.
The influence of Solanas' ideas on feminist theory and practice today is minimal to non-existent. Puffing her up into a great boogieman is to distract attention from the very real and serious problems with that theory and practice.
"And here is one of the biggest problems with the MRM in a nutshell: people who think they can refute others' arguments with the touch of a button, by referring to some dubious statistics they happened to run across on a random MRA blog, or by simply asserting things without evidence."
ReplyDeleteThat's also true of feminism, and political discussion in general.
@David.
ReplyDeleteNot with me they are not - I get my stats from the CDC and the AJPH.
Two government institutions that do actual non-biased research.
You are getting very close to discovering how "wrong" many of the ideas in your head are...
I am happy for you!
@Daran,
ReplyDeleteYou are someone for whom I have a lot of respect and I love your site and the work you do. However, the author of that Marc Lepine blog has said himself that it is satire (his exact word was "humorous" but you get the idea).
I would challenge you to identify ONE MRA with a real identity (not a screen name which could actually belong to an impersonating feminist) who seriously endorses Lepine or Sodini. MikeeUSA doesn't count because the rest of the MRA community rejects him.
Well, I don't know if this counts as "endorsing" exactly, because he doesn't say Lepine was right to kill people, but Peter Zohrab (founder of the usenet group alt.mens-rights) comes close, as do several of the people linked to on this page on his web site:
ReplyDeletehttp://peterzohrab.tripod.com/marcindx.html
Oh, so saying that Marc Lepine was right about some things he addressed in his suicide note "comes close" to saying he was right to kill people? I guess that means anyone who thinks Bill Clinton did anything right during his time as President must come close to saying he was right to cheat on his wife and use a cigar as a sexual prop, right?
ReplyDelete"the author of that Marc Lepine blog has said himself that it is satire..."
ReplyDeleteSo did the author of the SCUM Manifesto. I don't buy it.
"I would challenge you to identify ONE MRA with a real identity (not a screen name which could actually belong to an impersonating feminist)..."
A fifth column of feminist infiltrators into the MRA movement? I don't buy that either.
"...who seriously endorses Lepine or Sodini. MikeeUSA doesn't count because the rest of the MRA community rejects him."
You'll probably argue that the guy behind this site doesn't count either, and I'd agree. These people are the lunatic fringe that attach themselves to any movement.
Applying the same standard to the feminist movement, can you identify any feminists with real identities who seriously endorse Solanas? Here's one to get you started.
Well, Daran, I'm sure you have heard of Poe's Law which holds that you often can't tell the difference between extremism and satire without being able to read the author's mind (if you don't trust the author to tell the truth). The Marc Lepine blog looks like satire to me, with its silly graphics and over-the-top style that are reminiscent of an Encyclopedia Dramatica article, but I suppose we will never know for sure.
ReplyDeleteI think you misunderstand the rationale for my insistence on real identities for any quoted MRA. It's not that I think there are a bunch of deep-cover feminists within the movement, although I can't totally dismiss that possibility. Rather, it's that feminists can so easily post extreme and misogynist comments on blogs and sites like The Spearhead under the guise of being MRAs, and then conveniently quote said comments on their own sites as "proof" that MRAs are all misogynists.
As for Bob Allen, I also consider him to be part of the fringe although I had no idea he would be so stupid as to seriously defend Marc Lepine's actions as "a small counter attack against the onslaught" and to call female engineering students "foot soldier[s] in the feminist war on men". However, my argument for why MikeeUSA doesn't count as an MRA is that he is persona non grata at virtually every MRA site and blog of note. Since I can't say the same about Bob, I suppose he does count.
Obviously, since your link already gives the names of two feminists who seriously endorsed Solanas, I can meet that standard. To those names I will also add the highly contemptible Robin Morgan.
"it's that feminists can so easily post extreme and misogynist comments on blogs and sites like The Spearhead under the guise of being MRAs, and then conveniently quote said comments on their own sites as "proof" that MRAs are all misogynists."
ReplyDeleteWell they could, but why bother, when there are plenty of extreme and misogynistic comments and posts by MRAs with real identities/deep-cover feminists for them to quote?
"As for Bob Allen, I also consider him to be part of the fringe although I had no idea he would be so stupid as to seriously defend Marc Lepine's actions..."
if Allen is the same "Bob" who used to infest usenet about a decade ago -- and I'm pretty sure he is; his "style" is pretty distinctive -- then I'm not the least bit surprised that he's that stupid.
Here's Evind Berge who thinks that Sodini "is now a martyr and hero to the men's movement".
David, as you seem to strongly think the MRM aren't perfect. I think the feminist movement is FAR FAR FAR less perfect.
ReplyDeleteI saw an interesting article the other day that I want you to see. It explains how feminism oppresses men at this day and age.
Who’s oppressing who?
http://www.articlesaboutmen.com/2010/09/who%E2%80%99s-oppressing-who-911/
Who's oppressing whoM?
ReplyDelete"Who's oppressing whoM?"
ReplyDeleteWull uh guss u finawy scowed a pont agan da mra mooment.
From the article linked by anonymous:
ReplyDelete"The feminism I take exception to today is not the mild and blameless right of a woman to self-actualize that all women absorb by osmosis from the cultural air we breathe, but the radical ideology that has come to dominate the movement’s academic and institutional elites over the last 40 years."
No such animal.
Feminism has ALWAYS been about more stuff for women right from the beginning.
@Daran
ReplyDeleteIn my experience very, very few MRAs take the extreme positions that so many feminists are so determined to attribute to the movement. It's only when you have the setting of a well-known MRA site where people are allowed to leave anonymous comments or comments under pseudonyms that the extremist viewpoints suddenly come out of the woodwork. I'm not saying that all of those comments come from feminist impersonators, but it's my opinion that a good number of them do because it's such a convenient way to smear the movement. There is nothing "deep-cover" about feminists registering on The Spearhead, pretending to be MRAs, and leaving extreme and hateful comments to then conveniently quote on their own sites. It's incredibly simple to do and it would be extremely naive to think that it doesn't happen.
"I'm not saying that all of those comments come from feminist impersonators, but it's my opinion that a good number of them do because it's such a convenient way to smear the movement."
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but this is utterly absurd. MRA sites are crawling with so many crazy comments it would take an army of feminist MRA impostors working full time to even make a dent. And on The Spearhead, at least, these comments often get massive numbers of upvotes. And most of them aren't really any more extreme than stuff posted on MRA blogs. Or are those feminist MRA impostors as well? If so, please list some names.
Also, I see very little criticism of these sorts of comments and posts on MRA sites from MRAs. Paul Elam wrote one critique of one particular group of nuts, but later took it down; one of those nuts (jayhammmers) now posts regularly on the Spearhead.
If you think this sort of stuff makes MRAs look bad, why aren't you taking on the hateful commenters here and/or elsewhere?
Your idea of what is "crazy" is decidedly different from mine, but The Spearhead's recent implementation of comment rating, combined with the automatic hiding of low-rated comments, has done wonders for the signal to noise ratio there. Most of the people who were posting comments that meet my standard of "crazy" have become discouraged and left. I haven't seen any articles from JayHammers there in quite some time.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact I do spend quite a bit of time taking on things that make MRAs look bad. However, I don't give serious consideration to anonymous commenters. When MRAs want to quote examples of feminist hatred and lunacy, we find all we need in their literature and in signed articles on their websites; we don't need to resort to quoting or paraphrasing from the comments section. You can't say the same about feminists.
As a general rule, it's stupid to use anonymous comments as proof of anything, precisely because you don't know if they are serious or if they are being posted by trolls or impersonators. As for comments here, it seems to me that the whole point of your blog is to collect as many as you can. Why else would you be going out of your way to lure and provoke MRAs?
Posting my opinions counts as "luring and provoking?" It's somehow my fault that MRAs react the way they do?
ReplyDeleteI confess I have posted a few links to articles here on the sites I have criticized. I honestly had no idea so many MRAs would flock here, or that so many of them would post such nasty shit.
The guy who posts here as "Nick" has actually gone out of his way to recruit MRAs to come here and "give me grief." I put a link in one of my earlier comments about this.
My experience with the spearhead's comment rating system is that it's generally used to punish people who disagree with the consensus. But it is useful for seeing how much support certain crazy ideas have. Most if not all of the Spearhead comments I talked about in the "let's take away their right to vote" piece had dozens of upvotes and virtually no downvotes. If those people are secret feminist trolls, they're doing a wonderful job fitting in.
Oh are you going to play innocent and hope that I forgot about your trolling of MRA sites to advertise this blog? THAT is luring, and the language and graphics you use are clearly intended to provoke. Nick only knows about you because of your advertising, and I think you WANT to get as much attention from MRAs as you can.
ReplyDeleteThe Spearhead's comment rating system was a sorely needed antidote to the rubbish that was being posted by troublemakers, many of whom I continue to suspect of being feminists posing as MRAs. Even if they were genuine, they were still polluting the site
Having your comment hidden until the reader clicks a link to show it is a pretty minor punishment for disagreeing with the consensus. Many of the sites on your friends list punish disagreement with the consensus by deleting comments and banning users, even if they are perfectly civil.