"... morbidly obese basement-dwellers with a suspect affection for My Little Pony. But Max is remarkably unassuming in appearance, handsome enough and normally tall; equally imaginable in board shorts and a snapback as he is in the sort of graduation suit one wears to a first post-collegiate interview downtown."
Vox explains what internet men's rights men are really like.
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Hunh? Sorry, not clicking through to Vox, professor, but to this lady's imagination, the mens rights movement is a response to family court and men getting screwed therein. You know, dudes whose ex-wives walked away with the house, the kids, and large support judgments and who have decided that all women are cunts and whores and that young men should be urgently warned off marriage.
You'll see it happen right here on this comment thread within the half hour.
Neckbeards who dwell in the basement have very little overlap with guys who lost their families.
The internet is full of men who hate feminism? So is the real world. Women who hate feminism too.
I thought a "neckbeard," to the extent that it refers to a person, is a hipster who has facial hair only on his neck.
I look forward to the follow-up, where Vox explains that some feminists aren't ugly lesbians.
Why is the physical appearance of a political movement's members relevant, again?
Where would we be without these wonderful voxplainations? Seriously though, in my experience MRAs tend to be at least as big of a bunch of jerks as militant feminists.
All this talk of "men" and "women" is so cisnormative. How exclusionary it is for those who are intersex, genderqueer, androgyne, agender, gender fluid, pangender, two-spirit or otherwise non-binary. Vox, j'accuse!
You can see the dishonest framing right from the start:
The most public victims of last year's Gamergate rage — women like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and Brianna Wu — were not radicals.
Not radicals from the perspective of the author of the piece, who buys in to everything these three women apparently were saying.
I don't play video games, and I haven't followed this debate particularly closely, but one thing that is obvious to me is that there are a huge number of people who are incredibly threatened by the fact that some gamers were willing to push back hard against criticisms of gaming culture at all. In unrelated articles, I regularly see furtive, sidelong digs at the Gamergate protesters. They have obviously touched a raw nerve: within the context of gamer culture, the targets of their ire were clearly a lot more fringey than their supporters (or the author of this Vox piece) had ever realised. And their response --
Cet animal est tres méchant;
Quand on l'attaque il se défend.
How horrid that gamers should dare to counterattack when attacked by their betters!
Coincidentally, "morbidly obese basement-dwellers with a suspect affection for My Little Pony" is how I picture Vox contributors.
"In the bigoted projection of feminists and their progressive, sexist boot-lickers, made solely to marginalize dissent from their ideological radicalism, Mens Rights Activists are 'neckbeards'."
FTFY.
I had a triple spit take there, but then I realized you linked to vox.com and not some blog post by Red Pill advocate Vox Day.
Exactly as IHMMP said. Women are running around like leaches sucking the joy out of the lives of men. My brother just won a custody fight after 7 years and $40000 in child support. It took her getting caught lying about rape and trying to defraud both the state of Washington and Canadian government simultaneously to get the court off the default position of him giving her money.
There are several generations of men where significant portions will never get married because for men it is truly a stupid idea. Now you can't even hook up in college Without a good shot at getting destroyed.
Progressives are doing this on purpose and women are stupid enough to fall for it. There will be sexbots within a decade that make women completely unnecessary. Be careful what you agree to. Free abortions and birth control aren't worth irrelevance.
Feminism has morphed into a sexist hate movement that targets men. That's why more and more of todays men and women hate feminism.
An awful lot of "How can those silly Jews think they're oppressed when they own all the banks?" in that article.
"In the popular imagination as feminists would like it to be, Men's Right's Activists..."
FIFY
There will be sexbots within a decade that make women completely unnecessary.
Add another category to my list of questions in a time capsule, namely, "Are these guys still in the gene pool?"
Lot's of women opting out of future generations too.
Wikipedia actually scrubbed the article on the man in Keene, NH who burned himself to death on the courthouse steps to protest a family court ruling because it had "no political significance"
He was just a fucking neckbeard.
Progressives have to know their enemies so that they can hate them.
Reading the article, I thought about Black Like Me. Or Gorillas in the MIst.
I love this belief that men are supposed to keep the old status quo when women aren't doing so.
As has been said, chivalry had expectations on both men AND women. It's insane to expect men to abide by the same rules when women will not.
I won't warn my sons against marriage, but I will recommend using hookers for sex rather than start relationships with girls at their school if they go to college.
And anybody saying Sarkessian isn't a "radical" has never read anything she wrote. Which is expected. Nobody can take her seriously if they actually read her output.
Hint: Her twitter feed is likely not written by her. Her video series is ALSO likely not written by her.
And Wu and Quinn are just developers of unbelievably terrible games (seriously, look at the Steam forums in regards to their titles) who simply conflate ALL criticism as harassment.
I'm deep in Gamergate and the people who are routinely attacked have earned that. And the death threats at al are really suspicious (such as Anita re-tweeting one within seconds of it being posted on Twitter, for example)
Progressives have to not know their enemies so that they can hate them.
FIFY
Quinn is also completely nuts - compulsive lying, extreme narcissism, amd vicious manipulation and emotional abuse of the gamma males who seem to flock to her like moths to a flame.
Quinn is also completely nuts - compulsive lying, extreme narcissism, amd vicious manipulation and emotional abuse of the gamma males who seem to flock to her like moths to a flame.
And Gamergate hasn't given a damn about her in months.
They are all trying to get money in their Patreon accounts (where members of the gaming media give money to developers they like to live off of). What does Anita do when she gets a "threat"? Why, she shakes her tip jar. Ditto all of the others.
...but, yeah, no chance media ethics can be problem.
Another "Gorillas in the Mist" moment for liberal writers. Here, one brave soul actually ventures into their habitat to communicate with these strange beasts. What do they eat? What is their mating ritual? So mysterious, these traditional males.
I thought Gamergate started because some women was doing sexual favors for good press on her games? Am I wrong? The Vox article makes no mention of it.
"Some section of men have always jealously guarded their privilege, but we are for the first time seeing what happens when that same section begins to lose the assumption of its divine right."
That's where I quit reading that article. I have been divorced twice and, with one exception, emerged pretty well intact except for walking away from everything I owned. The exception was having a psychologist tell the court that I should not have custody of my 6 year old daughter because my ex-wife was too fragile to have her taken away. Not my daughter, mind you.
Anyway, the simplest source for a lot of this is a book called "Men on Strike" for which I wrote one of the early reviews on Amazon.
I worry about my 10 year old grandson going to college but he is young enough that maybe things will change.
Another change is that my ex-wife, over her addictions but now physically fragile, is back with me after 25 years.
Help me out here. Vox is that children's site you refer to every once in awhile, right?
The author of the essay sometimes deploys snark, which I think I can recognize, and sometimes down-low innuendo, which I'm not good at.
morbidly obese basement-dwellers with a suspect affection for My Little Pony
Is this snark for "gay, fat losers"?
Distinguishing [the woman at their fancy $8/shot bar] from the similarly well-highlighted, halter-topped women he shows me on Facebook as examples of what he's "into" requires some capacity for discernment I do not possess.
Innuendo? for, not sure here, but I'll take a stab at "I don't know a sexy, uptown feminist slut from sexy, downtown slut"...?
All of it breeds a certain paranoia, one I encountered in all the men I spoke to.
I assume left out was "...in research for this essay". Given that assumption, is it code for "apparently every man partial to the MRA thing is paranoid"?
Max is naturally charismatic, and I am not surprised he has a girlfriend, only that he wants one.
Innuendo-snark for "I think Max is gay and hasn't admitted it even to himself yet"?
The moral axioms are individual dignity and intrinsic value. Who is waging war on men, women, children, babies, and humanity, and what is their motive or long-term goal? Can they be characterized by their appearance, fashion, habitation, and incidental features? Should the same deny them their natural, moral, and legal rights?
I thought Gamergate started because some women was doing sexual favors for good press on her games? Am I wrong? The Vox article makes no mention of it.
Technically, no.
The whole women having sex thing was informally called the Quinnspiracy (based on the woman who did have sex with people who also served as judges as competitions that her game won in spite of being not terribly good). She also has inspired white knights in a way that truly boggles the mind with some fairly prominent people basically killing their own brand to defend her.
That was the seed, but when dozens of stories all hit on the same date (8/28/14, if memory serves) about how gamers are dead, then Gamergate hit.
That "our" media would not just attack us (which they had been doing for a while) but to work together in such an obvious manner was a bit too much.
The problems had been stewing for a while.
Under my thumb
A siamese cat of a girl
Under my thumb
She's the sweetest, hmmm, pet in the world
It's down to me
The way she talks when she's spoken to
Down to me, the change has come,
She's under my thumb.
Men just need a place to rest their thumb.
I am Laslo.
VOX got this wrong, too, of course.
As my sister Laetitia once said:
In the United States, men don't have a problem with women, they have a problem with American women.
My sister says a lot of good stuff.
I am Laslo.
"Vox explains"... strike one.
"they have a problem with American women."
I remember reading one time about the number of American ex-military retirees who are living very happily in the Philippines with their Philippine wives.
Over and over I have read about how obnoxious American women are when encountered by European men.
Unmentioned, of course, is that Polygon Media, one of the biggest offenders in the Gamergate controversy, just happens to be a property of Vox.
Nope, no conflict of interest here. Move along, please.
Great Laslo, now a have that stupid song stuck in my head:
El ah, eu dans las, teh ee teh ee ah.
Crunchy Frog:
So, Vox is creating a narrative in their diary/journal that appeals to their emotions and increases the page views. Juvenile, but smart nonetheless. I almost envy their proficiency to spin yarns like an old spinster retelling the glories of escaping near-death experiences.
Unmentioned, of course, is that Polygon Media, one of the biggest offenders in the Gamergate controversy, just happens to be a property of Vox.
Yes, there is that. Polygon is pretty terrible. Not Gamasutra or Gawker bad ... but bad.
TLDR.
I refuse to get up to speed on Gamergate.
Indeed, none of the men I spoke to about these issues are anything but friendly, almost eager to persuade. I suspect that this is because I am still a heterosexual white man. To Elam, and to Max, I am a heretic but I am not an infidel. I can still be saved.
Or they're just decent regular people. This author is looking for any reason real or imagined to hate these guys.
Re: Althouse:
I refuse to get up to speed on Gamergate.
The details seem sordid and yet terribly boring because I do not play video games. What is interesting to me is the overall picture, particularly the hysterical counterreaction to gamergate protests.
There are some gamers who have decided they can retreat no further, ils ne passeront pas! And there are some people who evidently find it mind-numbingly horrifying that gamers should have the sheer effrontry to like their games as they are and prefer they not be remolded as bluenose feminist critics think they ought to be.
It is resistance against the colonial mission civilisatrice. And easier for me to romanticise because it doesn't involve terrorism, racism, and murder, unlike most real-world anticolonial movements.
"To Elam, and to Max, I am a heretic but I am not an infidel. I can still be saved."
Sorrybut, the analogy stinks.
Orthodoxy has always dealt with heretics far more harshly than with infidels.
For infidels offer an opportunity as well as a threat, as, never having known "the truth," they might be converted. Whereas heretics are almost always apostates, those who have known "the truth" but rejected it (and are thereby beyond redemption).
Well, OK, the entire article stinks, as its premise is wrong: those who are active in men's rights are not bassement-dwelling "neckbeards," they are mostly the walking wounded who have been savaged by so-called "family courts."
Vox's Pov appears to be that such men deserve no rights, for they are white-privileged, heteronormitavely privileged, every-which-way privileged, and therefore they don't need no stinkin' rights.
And no, I'm not one of them. But I think I can understand their outrage at a legal system that will enforce a declaration of "I don't love you anymore ... so I'll take the kids and the house and much of your income for the next decade or two" and thus views fathers as little more than piggy banks, who apparently exist to support mommy's choices and lifestyle.
He is the mildest kind. I spent August with a well-adjusted man in a polo shirt who would never think to hurt someone except in self-defense, but he comes from a pot where new anger is boiling. And at least one of the bubbles so far was named Elliott Oliver Rodger, the 22-year-old man who went on a shooting spree last year near the University of California, Santa Barbara — an act he said was the result of being rejected by women.
Another disgusting comment by the author. Him and Rodger come from the same pot. The ideaology is sick because one mentally ill man used it to justify his actions.
but one thing that is obvious to me is that there are a huge number of people who are incredibly threatened by the fact that some gamers were willing to push back hard against criticisms of gaming culture at all.
I agree with most of what you wrong, but I have to disagree with the above bit. It isn't that there are a "huge" number of such people. The number is actually pretty small, it is just that they over wildly overrepresented in the gaming press.
There are two historical factors in play, too. The first is that games journalism has, historically, been nothing but a thinly-disguised ad campaign for gaming companies. There was and is very little real "journalism" there. Gamers knew the write-ups are bullshit, bought and paid for by gaming companies. You had to search long and hard to find a "reviewer" willing to admit that a big title actually sucked. We read gaming journals just to find out what games existed.
This played into the second historical factor, which is that gaming has had an active online discussion community longer than almost any other subculture in the world -- BBSs, then Usenet, then blogs and YouTube and social media. *This* is where the real reviews have always happened, and games "journalists" absolutely hate it.
Normally, "social justice" types take over a once-respected institution with no real history of user feedback -- TV news, say, or universities -- and start pushing their agenda. It works, both because of the residual respect for the institution and because users who are annoyed by it don't have a good way of knowing that most people agree with them.
In the case of gaming, the SJWs took over an institution that was respected by absolutely nobody, covering a culture that for the last 20+ years has gotten used to vociferously arguing about anything and everything related to it. And then the SJWs were shocked that they got pushback.
"Those men who do are an infinitesimal minority, and have "issues."
They usually have issues with divorce or child custody. Read a little about these groups. That's what they are focused on and many with good reason.
A doctor friend of mine had his wife leave him and move into his house with a boyfriend. She did not divorce him but sued for support. He was devastated and was working in an ER part time while he pulled his life back together.
The judge awarded the wife far more than he could afford to pay. When he objected, he was told by the judge that he could make far more money by working harder so he had simply awarded her alimony based on what the doc should have been earning.
True story.
I agree with most of what you wrong
that should be "most of what you wrote", hah.
No "men in shorts?"
sorry I don't read vox-planations
David said...
TLDR.
VoxDR.
Good perspective, Revenant.
Thanks!
I wish I could muster rage against Ezra Klein and Vox. He makes a lot of money than I and writes pure bullshit.
But I can't. Jealousy is not in my nature. He found a niche - writing dumb lies to a dumb crowd - and made it work.
Someday, I will find my niche. And it won't involve spreadsheets, FTP downlinks, and scenario modeling.
Maybe the author of that article could take Brian Williams place. She already knows how to distort and lie. And it's time we got rid of male anchors.
Anita Sarkeesian has become a Cult of Personality. Feminist Frequency is a 501C(3) too. Your tax dollars at work.
Sarah Silverman had a point in her Super Bowl commercial. Sorry, it's a boy.
Feminist Frequency's message of gaming being a boy's club that must be dismantled has even made it into Common Core curricula, thanks to the ADL. Yes, that ADL.
"I refuse to get up to speed on Gamergate."
That's ignorant. Its about Social Justice Warriors trying to do the same thing to the gaming community that Valenti and Marcotte pulled on you with BreastGate.
I don't expect you to have their back (unless they are gay) but the least you could do is educate yourself on why the topic is important to us.
From Wikipedia:
Vox Media Inc. (previously known as Sports Blogs, Inc and publicly known as Vox) is an American digital media company that currently has seven editorial brands: SB Nation, The Verge, Polygon, Curbed, Eater, and Racked.
Future Writers of the World.
Holey cow, how much are we expected to read before it gets interesting? what was it a thousand words describing his polo shirts and father's occupation. The great thing about the internet is that I am always one click from sanity.
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