We Hunted The Mammoth
October 6, 2014 8:47 AM   Subscribe

We Hunted The Mammoth digs deep into the varied worlds of Mens Rights Activism to examine anti-feminism through such lenses as giant harassment machines, pro-life horror movies, MRA automation, Islamophobia, Metafilter's own Scott Adams, and flatulence. Trigger warning: every imaginable type of MRA language. Also, explaining the mammoth thing.
posted by Evilspork (66 comments total) 42 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh hey the one on flatulence included a picture from this old thread!

....Actually, I'mma go look at that other thread about fart jokes in Japanese paintings, it's more fun.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:53 AM on October 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


Man between Tao Lin and Scott Adams it seems getting banned from Metafilter is a good indicator if someone is a complete shitstain.
posted by The Whelk at 8:54 AM on October 6, 2014 [17 favorites]


*lights match*
posted by jonmc at 8:56 AM on October 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


That MRAbot2000 shows real dedication to a bit.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:02 AM on October 6, 2014


Just this once (and with Tao Lin, holy shit how I detest...) can we disavow the "Metafilter's own"? I feel like by that rationale we own a fair percentage of the SEO asshats in the world, too.
posted by nevercalm at 9:03 AM on October 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ha, news to me that Scott Adams has been ‘round these parts. Somewhat related, Jon Stone did a nice write-up on the whole #gamergate debacle.
posted by bouvin at 9:07 AM on October 6, 2014


The bot cracks me up.
posted by rtha at 9:13 AM on October 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


David Futrelle is excellent people and I'm glad to see him getting attention.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:14 AM on October 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


Just this once (and with Tao Lin, holy shit how I detest...) can we disavow the "Metafilter's own"?

I think for people banned for self-promotion we can safely go with "Metafilter's Disowned".
posted by restless_nomad at 9:15 AM on October 6, 2014 [46 favorites]


No. I can't. I'd rather kill and eat so called mens activists.
posted by clvrmnky at 9:20 AM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've tried eating them, they're kind of mushy and moist. Do not recommend.
posted by desjardins at 9:38 AM on October 6, 2014 [7 favorites]


What the shit is this cesspool??
posted by stenseng at 9:41 AM on October 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


I laughed my ass off at the Dilbert man's bad opinions for a good five minutes

I knew about the site beforehand, but thanks for posting this
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:54 AM on October 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Glad to see they have no problems including the cesspool that is gamergate on that site, as there's clearly such a MRA thread running through it.
posted by evilangela at 9:55 AM on October 6, 2014


Somewhat related, Jon Stone did a nice write-up on the whole #gamergate debacle.

That is a good write-up. I particularly find interesting the parts about the rise of copy/paste faux-activism.

It's been amazing how often, for example, the exact same claims against Anita Sarkeesian are copy/pasted to twitter and elsewhere, proclaiming that she is engaging in "cherry picking". In a bit of irony that would be funnier if not attached to such a dangerous movement, about 99% of those proclamations specifically refer to only a single game that she's supposedly "cherry picked", which constitutes about 2-3 minutes out of the multiple hours of video she's published.

Cherry picking, indeed.
posted by tocts at 9:56 AM on October 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


stolen from an Onion video article

"Goon-faced man babies."
posted by The Whelk at 9:58 AM on October 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Farting as virility?! WUT. If many, many women (and probably people in general, because UGH) hate hearing/smelling you fart, STOP FARTING IN FRONT OF THEM ALL THE TIME instead of telling them they should not only put up with it, they should like it, and it makes you AWESOME and TOTALLY BUTCH.

Also, I don't understand how it would even be super macho or virile or whatever to fart anyway -- everybody gets gas, even infants. Why would it mean something TOTALLY DIFFERENT AND LAUDABLE because it's some man getting gas versus a baby or a college student or a teenage boy or an elderly woman or whoever? Obviously I'm not going to find it so sexy and hilarious as my elderly grandma can't help but one rip at dinner, because I'm not an idiot or an asshole, and I don't really know why I'd react differently to some guy doing the same thing?

Anyway, I don't have a sense of smell, which some men find WONDERFUL (which is a bit off-putting in itself) but there came a point when even I had to tell my then-boyfriend to knock it off with the farting in front of me. If your body is always making tons of weird factory-like honking and steam release noises, it's flat out unappetizing. And I'll roll with it if it's something that you actually can't help or would be painful to hold back on, etc etc etc. Especially because I was ummmm a bit gassy myself when I was growing up (HUGE fondness for milk). But COME ON you can excuse yourself to go to the bathroom if you've got a fart now and then and don't have some mobility issue that makes standing up and going into the bathroom really difficult and if gas is a constant problem you maybe need to look into making a dietary change. I mean, damn. Get yourself together.

A lot of this MRA stuff is so sickening to read, but I also find it straight up incomprehensible because it's like WAIT why are you guys making human relations so complicated? Like, if someone doesn't like you doing something, and you want to be in that person's good graces, why wouldn't you just not do that thing? Instead of screaming at her that she should learn to like it or whatever (when has THAT ever worked?).

I also can't imagine screaming at men that they should enjoy my farts and then farting all over them and laughing about it and threatening them that they'll be worthless pariahs if they don't laugh along with me and then screaming at them when they have the audacity to let out a little poot themselves, and then expecting them all to want to be my boyfriends and have lots of sex with me. Or actually, I can imagine it and it's making me laugh right now.

So I guess what I'm saying is, thanks for posting this, Evilspork.
posted by rue72 at 9:59 AM on October 6, 2014 [9 favorites]


What the shit is this cesspool??

Which one do you mean?
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:04 AM on October 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


Funny...throughout my entire life, farting on someone was pretty much as big an insult as you could deliver, and was good cause to get your dick knocked in the dirt. I don't think that's changed, should some MRA type decide I need to be indoctrinated.

Related: My wife half humorously records the fist time I passed gas in front of her as the moment I decided I was completely comfortable around her. I do not, however, expect her to revel in the manliness my butt-trumpets.
posted by kjs3 at 10:08 AM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Farting as virility?! WUT.

Bear in mind that a lot of the MRA types are basically manbabies who think watching a movie with swears in it is masculine.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:08 AM on October 6, 2014 [14 favorites]


The only thing keeping me going is mentally assuming they're all literally 12
posted by The Whelk at 10:11 AM on October 6, 2014 [12 favorites]


The Scott Adams thing is really just Male Answer Syndrome, and why I quit Facebook; every white male person thinks that they have written the doofus modern politics version of The Ninety-Five Theses, and instead of nailing it to the nearest church door they post it on their Facebook timeline. You are not enlightened or special: enjoy your priveleged life and stop trying to drop truth bombs on us.
posted by selfnoise at 10:14 AM on October 6, 2014 [15 favorites]


The only thing keeping me going is mentally assuming they're all literally 12

There was a survey in /r/MensRights awhile back which showed them to be 55% 13-24, 85% white, 81% straight, 70% single, 60% nonreligious. Nothing unexpected.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:17 AM on October 6, 2014 [6 favorites]


Goddamnit... I posted about The Toast just last week but today there's an Ortberg essay that's just about the best thing I've read in a long long time. (And relates to Tao Lin and other alt lit superstars.) Nothing funny, incredibly powerful.
posted by kmz at 10:20 AM on October 6, 2014 [8 favorites]


Marry young, marry pretty, give your husband your youth; not your flatulence.

Now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head again. Between #gamergate and threads about domestic violence featuring NFL fans, two of my favorite pastimes are starting to become a source of real depression. I follow some of the people on what I think of as the right side of the argument and it's just a stream of misery.

On a side note, before I was comfortable sounding off in front of my now wife I was risking my own health: due to leaky windows in her dorm, she had about a dozen well-tucked blankets on her bed. The morning after I first slept over I spent a painful hour waiting for her to wake up to use the bathroom (being stuck between her and the exit). Consider the gastrointestinal effects of a dozen plus really cheap American domestics, 8 hours simmering time and sleeping under what amounted to multiple versions of the lead blankets the dentist throws over you for x-rays.
posted by yerfatma at 10:37 AM on October 6, 2014


Dang, kmz, that was good.
posted by postcommunism at 10:39 AM on October 6, 2014


While I despise the MRA movement and all of their stupid, misogynistic, misinformed, and sad opinions on women and feminism, I'm sort of glad they exist... (for a very limited value of "glad")

They provide an instructive example of what people sound like when they post a misogynist joke, I can point to these assholes and say, "Really? You want to count yourself with these people? Would you want this said about your mother? Your sister? Your daughter?"

I never really understood when my minority friends said that they prefered it when racism was right there out in the open, so that they didn't have to worry about getting surprised by it when it showed up. MRAs have given me a better understanding of what they're talking about, because there is nothing worst than having a conversation with someone and hearing them casually mention something truly and horrifically misogynistic. It's like stepping in dogshit in what appears to be a clean patch of grass. Unexpected, unwanted, disgusting, and something that taints you until you can take the time to rid yourself of it. (But you can never get rid of the knowledge that other turds are out there, waiting to be found.)
posted by quin at 10:42 AM on October 6, 2014 [6 favorites]


Thanks for this, it is interesting and I always find this stuff more upsetting than I expect to. This one time Mr. Pterodactyl found a quiz where you could find your "value" and I was like "oh hahahaha I will totally take that it will be hilarious". Well, it wasn't, and about a third of the way through I realized I was super depressed and upset and stopped because so much of it was about how I was worthless because of stuff I couldn't control like, for example, my age, and how none of it was about my personality or actions or me as a person or anything. I mean, I KNEW this would be the case, but having it made so enormously clear to me that I was considered absolutely without value was still really depressing and, even if my value had been high (I mean I am thirty what did I expect), knowing that it would be based on this stuff outside my control was super upsetting.

There was also a version for men so I took that instead, and it was way better in terms of how it made me feel as someone taking it. I'm apparently a Classic Beta but this was almost entirely based on stuff I could control. Even the things about appearance were hugely different! For women it was "do you look way better with makeup?" for men it was about stuff like working out and grooming. I can control my grooming! I can make my face look better -- WITH MAKEUP! The men's version was largely about how you react to certain situations, too, mostly involving how good you are at making women feel badly about themselves.

I knew the quiz would be bad, but I wasn't really prepared for HOW bad it would make me feel, even though I know that these guys suck. Knowing that there's actually NOTHING I CAN DO to make myself seem worthwhile as a person and that the easiest way to make myself seem worthwhile as an object is to make a time machine and become seventeen (seriously, seventeen. Gross) bothered me more than I expected. It can be surprisingly painful to come face-to-face with that rage and anger and hate about the fact of your existence, even from people who you know are huge jerks.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 10:47 AM on October 6, 2014 [19 favorites]


Nothing funny, incredibly powerful.

That was really fucking hard to read for reasons that I find I am not very interested in thinking about right now.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:50 AM on October 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Which one do you mean?


All of it, I guess? I was tangentially aware that this MRA stuff exists, but yeesh. Ugly.
posted by stenseng at 11:07 AM on October 6, 2014


The MRA Movement: Worst. Patriarchy. Ever.
posted by jonp72 at 11:09 AM on October 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


The only thing keeping me going is mentally assuming they're all literally 12

There was a survey in /r/MensRights awhile back which showed them to be 55% 13-24, 85% white, 81% straight, 70% single, 60% nonreligious. Nothing unexpected.


Actually, this is kind of unexpected ... at least the 19% non-straight part. Unless they're including the involuntary celibate guys, this seems like a lot of gays. And while I know there's a fair amount of misogyny among gay men, I've never seen it rise to the level of vitriol we see in the MRA.

I just can't grasp why gay men would be so angry at women.

Actually, I can't grasp this level of misogyny at all. But at least with the straight guys I can see where the rot is coming from (sexual insecurity, social insecurity, an inability to distinguish their fantasies from real life, an inability to distinguish between "Hollywood" women and real women, et cetera).
posted by kanewai at 11:56 AM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


We Hunted the Mammoth is one of the sites I'll occasionally check out but that I find too depressing to have in my rss reader because my GOD there's so much angry anti-woman stupidity out there. But when I'm in the right mood to point and laugh, WHtM is right there for me.
posted by rmd1023 at 12:08 PM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Unless they're including the involuntary celibate guys, this seems like a lot of gays

Bisexual guys also exist. Although 19% non-hetero guys - gay and bi - seems like a really high percentage. I wonder if some percentage consider themselves asexual. That doesn't make a lot of sense either, but none of this does.
posted by desjardins at 12:17 PM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sadly the existence of misogynist gay men doesn't really surprise me. Part of it is down to seeking approval/acceptance from men you perceive as highly masculine -- it's kind of the male analog of the "no I'm a cool girl, not a girly girl" phenomenon.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:19 PM on October 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


The graph says 10% bisexual, 5% gay, 3% other. They don't break it down by gender, though only around 10% of respondents identified as female, so. And now I feel a strong urge to erase my browser history.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:22 PM on October 6, 2014


Man between Tao Lin and Scott Adams it seems getting banned from Metafilter is a good indicator if someone is a complete shitstain.

who is this in reference to? I'm not following.
posted by Theta States at 12:34 PM on October 6, 2014


Tao Lin was banned from Metafilter for self-linking; Scott Adams for totally bizarre sockpuppetry.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:38 PM on October 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh wait, I figured it out. I thought you meant someone else in the articles, besides Scott Adams.
posted by Theta States at 12:38 PM on October 6, 2014


Speaking of /r/MensRights stats, /r/SubredditAnalysis has some relevant drilldowns which show overlap in posters between a given subreddit and un/related ones:

/r/MensRights drilldown
/r/TheRedPill drilldown

(semi related:)
/r/DarkEnlightenment drilldown
posted by postcommunism at 12:49 PM on October 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's like a buffet of fascism!
posted by The Whelk at 12:51 PM on October 6, 2014 [10 favorites]


Not that it matters, but I don't think Scott Adams was actually banned, just side-eyed in a most severe fashion.
posted by selfnoise at 1:02 PM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Imagine if there was a bunch of wanna-be supervillans on a forum asking to join the illuminati, something that does not exist.

It would look exactly like this.
posted by nickggully at 1:06 PM on October 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


Tao Lin was banned from Metafilter for self-linking

I assume he was mentioned because of the relevance to this thread over him being accused of sexual assault that he's engaging in non-denial denials and semantic assholery over.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:14 PM on October 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


A former partner and I used to fart around each other all the time.


Not as a sign of virility. Because farts are funny.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:42 PM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


There was a survey in /r/MensRights awhile back which showed them to be 55% 13-24, 85% white, 81% straight, 70% single, 60% nonreligious. Nothing unexpected.

That seemed like a pretty high percentage of nonreligious users of that sub-reddit to me at first, but I'm thinking that many religious mysogynists tend to express or experience their mysogyny through religion rather than through the language of secular rights.
posted by Area Man at 1:53 PM on October 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


That seemed like a pretty high percentage of nonreligious users of that sub-reddit to me at first, but I'm thinking that many religious mysogynists tend to express or experience their mysogyny through religion rather than through the language of secular rights.

One of the reasons MRAs so consistently come off as crass and boorish is that they're rather explicit about their misogyny in ways that traditional patriarchal society would prefer be implicit or cloaked in rhetoric about tradition.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:13 PM on October 6, 2014 [17 favorites]


internet: vast polarization machine
posted by telstar at 4:36 PM on October 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Area Man: "That seemed like a pretty high percentage of nonreligious users of that sub-reddit to me at first"

I'm surprised in the other direction, actually. My impression of MRA folks is "stridently atheist, stridently libertarian".
posted by Bugbread at 6:23 PM on October 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Was Adams banned? The plannedchaos profile page does not say the account has been disabled.
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:51 PM on October 6, 2014


David Futrelle is such a mensch. I don't know how this man has the will to keep up the fight, but he does, and it's awesome.
posted by oceanjesse at 7:13 PM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


The way /r/RedPillWomen differs from /r/TheRedPill is that women are the gatekeepers of sex and men are the gatekeepers of commitment, so RPW works toward keeping women from squandering sex while working towards obtaining commitment, and TRP works toward keeping men from squandering commitment while working towards obtaining sex.
I don't even...
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:46 PM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've tried eating them, they're kind of mushy and moist. Do not recommend.

I'm curious, was he literally thanking you the entire time because finally another human being was putting their lips near him?

I guess what bugs me (other than the blindingly obvious I mean) about MRA dinosaurs is how much time and thought we give them. We pay basically no attention to white supremacists. Swap in gender, and that's what these guys are. Yes, we need to talk about and combat racism and sexism, no question, but WHtM and /TheRedPill are basically Stormfront for misogynists.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:15 PM on October 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


rue72: Farting as virility?! WUT. If many, many women (and probably people in general, because UGH) hate hearing/smelling you fart, STOP FARTING IN FRONT OF THEM ALL THE TIME instead of telling them they should not only put up with it, they should like it, and it makes you AWESOME and TOTALLY BUTCH.

Back in the old days when i used to hang out on various troll messageboards(the hosted threaded forum variety, not 4chan), of the "invade furry forum and harass them for weeks" type, this is the sort of thing someone would have cooked up to inject as a real concept. It's just too fucking perfect from that standpoint.

Like, one of the funnier people on the site would have come up with the idea, and spent weeks racking up credibility by circlejerking and agreeing with people in threads on there, and then posted a big manifesto of things they knew the MRAs would agree with and mix it in there. Maybe reference or repost it a few more times. The goal would be to get other people to start repeating it, then keep posting it and encouraging it.

Successful traction of stupid fucking ideas like this was hard, and was an awesome victory when you could pull it off. Some of the funniest people i saw on there basically made a hobby out of doing shit like this and were amazing at injecting dumb things in to the culture of communities. They would make accounts, make a few random posts for like six months and then start working up to doing it.


This may very well be real, MRAs are ridiculous, but it bears all the hallmarks of a truly skilled and dedicated classically trained troll. And i like to think there's still some of those out there, people who are actually willing to put in the effort to do an actually funny troll that requires real work and doesn't hurt anyone.

A sort of, COINTELBRO.
posted by emptythought at 2:55 AM on October 7, 2014 [19 favorites]


This may very well be real, MRAs are ridiculous, but it bears all the hallmarks of a truly skilled and dedicated classically trained troll.

I've always suspected that there's an element of that at play here.

Then you get that second generation of not-very-bright people feeding off this and taking it onboard as a legit political stance. It would certainly account for the yahoos who rock up on social networks actually referencing gamergate as a legitimate movement - or who are more than happy to parrot their definitions of feminism as learned from Tumblr.

There's certainly a hardcore actual element of MRAs out there, but it's surprising how many of the passive 4chan types you encounter out in the wild.
posted by panboi at 3:10 AM on October 7, 2014


It's also weird how much overlap there is in the Venn diagram of 'homophobes' and 'MRA asshats.' You'd think they'd be overjoyed that we aren't competing for 'their' women, but nooo...
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:15 AM on October 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


They've so profoundly bound their identities up in their ideas about hegemonic masculinity that the existence of homosexuality feels like a personal attack to a lot of them.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:26 AM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


The mammoth hunting thing is cracking me up.

There's kind of a running gag going between me and my gf about mammoth hunting. It started on a w-e morning, I was making breakfast but mostly I was just standing there in a daze looking at the espresso machine waiting for the light indicating it's ready to make the first cup. In the meantime my gf had gotten busy (starting the laundry + other chores), she passed the kitchen and asked me what I was doing, I answered "I'm making breakfast/coffee", amused at my lack of activity she retorted I was just like the mammoth hunters, waiting for the mammoth to come and go in the trap while the women where in the village doing all the other things. Mammoth hunter has been as a tease many times after that.

So.. mammoth hunter... not so glorious as people might think ; )
posted by coust at 11:43 AM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


For some reason I always assumed this blog had made it to MeFi before. It's pretty great!
posted by brundlefly at 1:20 PM on October 7, 2014


I know I've mentioned it at least 4 or 5 times in comments here and on the green, but probably under its older name of "manboobz.com". Any time MRA or online misogyny comes up, I'll recommend it to folks. I find the combination snarky commentary and 'he poked around to find the quotable sections so I don't have to' a great value-add.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:06 PM on October 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


I assume he was mentioned because of the relevance to this thread over him being accused of sexual assault that he's engaging in non-denial denials and semantic assholery over.

The very first clause of that article describes Tao Lin as an "alt lit mainstay". A few paragraphs later he's "lauded for his weird brilliance".

Erin Gloria Ryan is obviously Tao Lin.
posted by clarknova at 4:05 PM on October 7, 2014


except ... he really is alt-lit's most famous exponent? and he really has gotten praise for his books?

and also he's a rapist
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:09 PM on October 7, 2014 [4 favorites]


For some reason I always assumed this blog had made it to MeFi before. It's pretty great!

Someone mentioned it last year when I asked for feMENist magazine recs here on the green.
posted by oceanjesse at 5:52 PM on October 8, 2014


> Farting as virility?! WUT. If many, many women (and probably people in general, because UGH) hate hearing/smelling you fart, STOP FARTING IN FRONT OF THEM ALL THE TIME instead of telling them they should not only put up with it, they should like it, and it makes you AWESOME and TOTALLY BUTCH.

> This may very well be real, MRAs are ridiculous, but it bears all the hallmarks of a truly skilled and dedicated classically trained troll. And i like to think there's still some of those out there, people who are actually willing to put in the effort to do an actually funny troll that requires real work and doesn't hurt anyone.


I certainly hope that's how it started since it's so mindbogglingly ridiculous, but it's just damned near impossible to tell anymore.
posted by homunculus at 12:11 AM on October 9, 2014


The farting thing kind of makes sense if you think about the redpill stuff as basically a sitcom-masculinity fetish doing cosplay as ideology.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:25 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]




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