A large but weak web.
April 26, 2017 6:23 AM Subscribe

The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’. An investigation by The Daily Beast has discovered a trail of posts and aliases linking a Republican New Hampshire state representative to the creation of Reddit's misogynist RedPill sub. Subreddit Drama thread. r/politics thread. r/TheRedPill itself, for those unfamiliar with the topic. (content warning for all of the above reddit threads, especially the last.)
posted by soundguy99 (207 comments total) 52 users marked this as a favorite

I was going to bring this over if no one had yet by the end of the day. It's... something, that is for sure. He barely made an attempt to cover his tracks and I'm surprised it took this long for someone to dig into it, frankly. I guess actually what took this long is enough people to care given the degree to which TheRedPill is integrated into the Venn Diagram of Internet Neofascism Boosters currently shitting up the world.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:30 AM on April 26, 2017 [24 favorites]

Elsewhere, he wondered why listing his accomplishments on dates, including his status as a candidate and “high level exec,” was apparently a turnoff to women, despite it being characteristically alpha.

Clearly, it's the feminist conspiracy.

I have to admit, I like "The Five Nines" as a band name though.
posted by Slothrup at 6:38 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Wait, are you telling me that American right-wing loons are a part of the emergence of American right-wing loons?

Heavy.
posted by pompomtom at 6:40 AM on April 26, 2017 [43 favorites]

As pointed out in the other thread, the New Hampshire House of Representatives is comparatively huge -- there's approximately one Rep per 3,300 New Hampshirites. Not a typo: three thousand and three hundred. (However, this aardvark appears to be in a huge district (Belknap 9) and got 5,700 votes in the last election.)
posted by Etrigan at 6:42 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

A friend of mine is a news anchor at a New Hampshire station, and I've been pestering him endlessly to turn this into a top-of-the-hour story. Apparently there's some hesitation while they wait for the state's Democrats to comment on it, and the Democratic leadership has no idea how to make political hay of this without pissing off the (apparently significant) number of angry misogynist swing voters.

So, at the risk of bleeding over from the political thread: way to fall on your own sword yet again, useless Democratic leaders.
posted by Mayor West at 6:44 AM on April 26, 2017 [95 favorites]

Well, not to mention that he first ran (and lost) as a Democrat. Which I guess is a perfect encapsulation of stereotypical Reddit: "I'm totally liberal, except that those mean feminists turned me into a misogynistic conservative ballbag."
posted by uncleozzy at 6:47 AM on April 26, 2017 [88 favorites]

This comment from the /r/politics thread is pretty funny: "how did new hampshire elect a sentient fedora"
posted by Pendragon at 6:47 AM on April 26, 2017 [114 favorites]

Reddit's admins are totally cool with violently misogynist subs posting material inciting violence towards Jews, PoC, women, and children [cw: everything just mentioned]. What they're not cool with? Moderators of leftist subs that don't strictly police literally every single use of "bash the fash" and who politely ask for clarification when warned. That'll get you a bannin'.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:47 AM on April 26, 2017 [40 favorites]

Five Nines = 99.999% uptime.

(The corporate identity used by Maciej Cegłowski for his (excellent) Pinboard.in is "Nine Fives Software")
posted by runcifex at 6:48 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

What I find astonishing about this isn't that some rando Republican is a misogynist, it's that he has so much time to manage a subreddit. Also the separate identity, that's a lot of work. But then I guess the Internet generation is now coming of the age where they become politicians. Some of them were quite active online for years and have a trail.

We're a long way from Newt Gingrich's Amazon reviews.
posted by Nelson at 6:50 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

"red pill"? That's clearly a red and white capsule. Fucking idiots.
posted by NoMich at 6:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

That exposé needs extensive copy-editing.
posted by Glomar response at 6:52 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Republicans have plenty of time for that since actually doing anything worthwhile is against their religion.
posted by Artw at 6:58 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

A couple deleted. Let's not completely derail this to be again about how much the dems suck. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 7:05 AM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

This is my surprised face.
posted by dry white toast at 7:09 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Because I am petty, the one thing I did enjoy about this was reading all the times he complained about not being able to get dates; the women of NH seem to good at avoiding wankers like this. Possibly because they have to. But still it seems to have made him miserable and, again, because I am petty, I did enjoy that bit.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 7:14 AM on April 26, 2017 [57 favorites]

I know, dry white toast. So much shock I feel that I'm prostrate on my fainting couch.

ALthough it is nice to have a concrete example to point to when people claim 'oh, internet misogynists are all fourteen and live in their mom's basements, you should ignore them.'
posted by winna at 7:15 AM on April 26, 2017 [20 favorites]

The Five Nines album is on iTunes (not gonna link it because screw this creep, but it's not hard to find), and the track listing just seems like a concept album about his frustrations with women ("Running Around", "Who You Are", "Not True", "Waste My Money", "The End?" "Good Bye" "All Alone").
posted by DiscountDeity at 7:16 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

New Hampshire legislators are the same assholes that thought it was a good idea to bully a class of 4th graders.

Given there's a zillion of them and they don't make any money, there's a higher than average cretin quotient in the NH legislature.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Because I am petty, the one thing I did enjoy about this was reading all the times he complained about not being able to get dates; the women of NH seem to good at avoiding wankers like this. Possibly because they have to. But still it seems to have made him miserable and, again, because I am petty, I did enjoy that bit.

"Friends don't let friends date Republican legislators."

I mean, how they treat women is not exactly a secret.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:22 AM on April 26, 2017 [29 favorites]

Is he still an open atheist whilst being a Republican legislator, or did he go through the ritual of Mouthing That Jesus Shit to get elected?
posted by acb at 7:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

I wish I could say I'm surprised. I'm starting to see a lot of men in their late twenties/early thirties becoming deeply embittered at not having a wife or serious girlfriend, because They Have Been Told it's the measure of a successful man. The ones most outwardly successful seem to be the most vulnerable to this nonsense.
posted by corb at 7:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [22 favorites]

Wait! New Hampshire? Is this Jonah Ryan? You know, from Veep (Oh god, that link is NOT safe for work. Or decent people. It's from Veep, so you know there will be nothing but filthy language.).
posted by NoMich at 7:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Because I am petty, the one thing I did enjoy about this was reading all the times he complained about not being able to get dates...

Apparently "live free or die, babe" isn't the successful pickup line it once was.
posted by TedW at 7:39 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

"Is he still an open atheist whilst being a Republican legislator, or did he go through the ritual of Mouthing That Jesus Shit to get elected?"

There's no question Reddit is a mixed bag, but there's also no question that the awful parts are really, really awful. Sure, it's easy enough to filter out those awful parts from your view but they still exist. And they're not going away anytime soon.
posted by tommasz at 7:46 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Career misogynist runs computer repair centers? Sounds harmless. I'm sure he's not installing malware for PUA purposes.
posted by benzenedream at 7:50 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Thanks making this its own post out of the morass of the potus45 threadz. This guy is indeed a fedora personified.

_{In conclusion, Reddit is a land of contrasts. I got a chuckly out of wrapping that in "sub" tags.}
posted by aspersioncast at 7:52 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Career misogynist runs computer repair centers?

At this point, if they don't get him for having covertly filmed sex partners, they'll get him for having stolen customers' data / photos. If "they" have any interest in "getting" him, which ... not gonna hold my breath.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:54 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I think that a lot of the men who are successfully seduced by this nonsense might have benefited instead from treatment for the social anxiety and depression that was likely making them so unsuccessful with women.

The Republican guy is covering up a lack of confidence. It's obvious. So are a lot of these dudes. It's being used to turn them into monsters.

Assholes are very wounded on the inside, and we all want to be loved, so these wounded people who want to be loved are becoming monsters because instead of healing their wounds they're having them salted.
posted by actionpotential at 7:57 AM on April 26, 2017 [34 favorites]

Just like the Democratic party is really just the sum of a very diverse array of state parties with diverse priorities and interests, so is the Republican party. New Hampshire Republicans aren't all really so big on the "Mouthing That Jesus Shit", just like Indiana Republicans are mostly not that into culture war stuff, and Hawaii Republicans are now pretty evenly divided between those who pine for the policies of Eisenhower and full on Trumpist blackshirts.

Though, from what I've read, open atheists have a hard enough time getting elected to public office in the US in normal cases (a significant proportion of the public still equates religious faith with morality, and considers atheists inherently untrustworthy, to make it a liability). Is this also not the case in New Hampshire, did Fisher conceal his atheism from voters, or will enough misogyny/muscular assholery compensate, in the eyes of potential voters, for the culture-war liability that atheism presents?
posted by acb at 8:03 AM on April 26, 2017

The New Hampshire Democratic Party/Young Democrats released a joint statement, calling on him to resign; not sure if there's been any response.
Text here (FB Link)

However, this aardvark appears to be in a huge district (Belknap 9) and got 5,700 votes in the last election.)

It's a little complicated. Larger towns/cities get one representative per ward, and then sort of "at large" representatives for the excess population. I voted for two, for example, one for my specific ward, and then one for the combination of my ward + one other. Fisher looks like he was running for a seat in Belmont, and then as an at-large for Laconia.
posted by damayanti at 8:04 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Assholes are very wounded on the inside, and we all want to be loved, so these wounded people who want to be loved are becoming monsters because instead of healing their wounds they're having them salted.

This does seem to ignore the fact that a large number of people in the same situation don't turn into monsters. People in pain may lash out from time to time, but those who build and maintain an entire subreddit as a way of manifesting their pain and turning it into a weapon to cause others pain are an entire other category I feel.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:11 AM on April 26, 2017 [89 favorites]

This does seem to ignore the fact that a large number of people in the same situation don't turn into monsters. People in pain may lash out from time to time, but those who build and maintain an entire subreddit as a way of manifesting their pain and turning it into a weapon to cause others pain are an entire other category I feel.

Not everyone gets the same kind of background that allows them to have the presence of mind necessary to not go down the path this guy did. I'd wager he's seen some shit and had bad parents and was raised in a community that didn't encourage compassion.

This in no way excuses what he did, because it's horrifying, but these things don't occur without a cause.
posted by actionpotential at 8:14 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Who do we need to put pressure on to get this guy out of office? I have a few ideas, but. This guy obviously doesn't have any shame so shaming him out of office would be a tall order; then again if public pressure can kick O'Reilly out of Fox, perhaps the same can be done here. Different ballgame of course since we are talking about a corporation/advertising revenue vs a congressman/campaign contributions. Who are the PACs and other high profile jerks bankrolling this scum?
posted by nightrecordings at 8:16 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Live free ~~or Die~~ and resign"
posted by aspersioncast at 8:19 AM on April 26, 2017

New Hamster is the Indiana of New England somehow; an enclave far more politically conservative than its neighbors. Never been sure why in either case.

Nice granite, though.

I'm prostrate on my fainting couch.

On a fainting couch? Supine, surely.

posted by Herodios at 8:20 AM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Any reason for this, or just garden variety benefit of the doubt?

Nobody's born an angry misogynist.
posted by actionpotential at 8:20 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

I think that a lot of the men who are successfully seduced by this nonsense might have benefited instead from treatment for the social anxiety and depression that was likely making them so unsuccessful with women.

This is a really charitable interpretation, and it's one I used to believe. But I really, really don't feel that's the case anymore - I think it's entitlement, pure and simple.

I have five friends who have been developing issues with women over years, and who are now all in MRA/red-pill land, much to my despair. I have really good insight into their situation, because on the lead-up to this, I tried, with all of them, to help them find women, and so was treated to long sit-downs about What They Wanted In A Woman.

5/5 of them wanted to date only white women, even the POC guy.
5/5 refused to date a woman who had been married before or who had any children.
4/5 wanted a date significantly more attractive than they were - the 1/5 was extremely attractive and wanted to date only women equally as physically attractive.
5/5 wanted to date a woman making equal pay or better to them.
5/5 wanted to date a woman younger than them, with preference given to women roughly ten years younger than them.

And that's not even adding on all of the fringe stuff that they felt was absolutely necessary. So essentially, when these kinds of men are looking for women, it's not that they "Can't get a date, poor them", it's that they are looking for the media-approved 'Cream Of The Crop' - young, conventionally attractive white women, with high incomes and no previous entanglements. They refuse to acknowledge or deal with the fact that they weren't themselves 'media-approved Cream Of The Crop' candidates, but they still felt entitled to 'media-approved Cream of the Crop' women.

You see this a lot with a lot of the romantic comedies that have been marketed lately - it's matching a lot of 'lovable loser' men with beautiful, high-powered women. Men believe that they deserve this, that they are owed the pinnacle of womanly perfection just for...existing, and not being a flaming asshole. If we don't fix the entitlement behind this shit, I'm afraid we're going to see more and more of this, as women realize they don't actually need, and are better off without, a lot of these guys.
posted by corb at 8:23 AM on April 26, 2017 [231 favorites]

I'd rather not classify misogyny as a mental illness. Apart from the fact that it stigmatizes people with actual mental issues, it also makes it easier to handwave away when real action is proposed. Besides, there are plenty of cases where people who have no evidence of horrible things done to them in their past end up being horrible people.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:24 AM on April 26, 2017 [55 favorites]

New Hamster is the Indiana of New England somehow; an enclave far more politically conservative than its neighbors. Never been sure why in either case.

Uh, as a Hoosier.

1. Indiana only barely touches Lake Michigan; every other Great Lakes state has more shoreline. Steel is heavy. So when steel mills with union jobs went in, there were a lot more built in the other states.

2. Indiana does not have cities to rival its fellow Great Lakes states. Illinois has Chicago, Michigan has Detroit metro (which is much larger than most folks realize), Ohio has Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton. Indiana just has Indy, which is roughly the size and composition of Columbus. Louisville and Cincy sit just across the Ohio from Indiana, and function as cities for our residents, but they're in other states. Indy is not a historically industrial city, in fact, it's the largest city without a navigable waterway.

3. Appalachian immigration. Indiana had a large influx of Appalachian immigrants, which effects both our speech (more 'southern' than Ohio or Illinois) and our politics (distrust of big government, educated elites, etc.)
posted by leotrotsky at 8:24 AM on April 26, 2017 [18 favorites]

Nobody's born an angry misogynist.

I agree with this but don't think it really has bearing on the guy's fitness for office. His misogyny may be pathological but that doesn't make it any more compatible with the requirements of the job. If he either acknowledged it and seemed to make a genuine effort at recovery, with people keeping a close eye on his actions, or stepped down acknowledging his incapacity, he might redeem himself a little. But otherwise, he needs to either honestly handle his shit or let someone more capable take his place.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

New Hampshire state motto continues to be Live Free Or Die But Mostly Just Die.
posted by maryr at 8:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I don't think I'm classifying misogyny as a mental illness or handwaving away the influence of society, which is built by people, all of whom have some kind of baggage. corb, it strikes me that it's possible your friends are more susceptible to society's influence and maybe are insecure with their masculinity or something like that, which isn't even mental illness so much as a bad thing that guys develop sometimes for a variety of reasons, not all of them within any one person's control, and obviously it's their responsibility to get out of their insecurity but I can see why this would happen.
posted by actionpotential at 8:29 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

"red pill"? That's clearly a red and white capsule. Fucking idiots.

I assume they stopped using screenshots from The Matrix either because of copyright takedowns or because the Wachowskis both came out as trans women.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:29 AM on April 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

Indiana's dialect abberation: the Hoosier Apex. "The Hoosier Apex ...is located in the southern/central west part of Indiana and a sliver of the south eastern part of Illinois and what it is is that it suddenly sounds like you just crossed into the state of Alabama." See also this Pop vs Soda map
Indiana sticks out like a bright red thumb.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:30 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

On a fainting couch? Supine, surely.

Thank you for linking definitions because I don't know what the words I use mean.
posted by winna at 8:34 AM on April 26, 2017 [36 favorites]

Metafilter: I don't know what the words I use mean.
posted by orrnyereg at 8:36 AM on April 26, 2017 [24 favorites]

Assholes are very wounded on the inside, and we all want to be loved, so these wounded people who want to be loved are becoming monsters because instead of healing their wounds they're having them salted.

The whole concept of toxic masculinity comes up again and again. How do we change it?

Of course we need to change attitudes, but we also need to be better at providing empathy to men for problems such as finding dates, and love, even though they seem trivial compared to the problems that women face. It doesn't have to be one or another, and it shouldn't be a competition of whose problem is worse.

Of course a mosquito bite is nothing compared to a shark bite, but if we disregard all those people suffering from mosquito bites, we create an empathy vacuum, and it will get filled, possibly by some unsavory philosophy.

If I tell my kid who has a needle phobia that he just needs to "deal with it", because his cousin has to have blood draws weekly, well he might, but he might not. He might feel cornered and find another way to get empathy.

That being said, I don't think that all misogynists are "simply misunderstood" - there are plenty of jerks who have no such excuses, but like cancer, we need to classify and categorize the disease, and treat each type accordingly
posted by bitteroldman at 8:44 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Of course we need to change attitudes, but we also need to be better at providing empathy to men for problems such as finding dates, and love, even though they seem trivial compared to the problems that women face.

Who is "we" in this sentence? Who needs to be doing this labor who is not already doing it?
posted by KathrynT at 8:46 AM on April 26, 2017 [80 favorites]

I don't think "not getting everything my own way all the time" qualifies as a trauma, either.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:46 AM on April 26, 2017 [92 favorites]

why can't we acknowledge both?

I don't feel like "the plight of the boy who wants to date the prettiest girl in school" is particularly unexamined at this point.
posted by KathrynT at 8:50 AM on April 26, 2017 [124 favorites]

i agree this is the case now, and I don't know why.
why can't we acknowledge both?

because we can't even manage one yet.
posted by srboisvert at 8:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [27 favorites]

The problem with the "oh, won't somebody think of the assholes and the trauma they had to endure in order to become assholes" argument is that it ignores all the trauma that women also endure, not only from the same forces that supposedly radicalized the redpillers but from the redpillers themselves

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive things to consider. Hurt people do the best job of causing the kind of trauma that's inflicted on women ('hurt people hurt people' and all that jazz), and I agree that the hurt inflicted on women should be the first of the two traumas here that is considered.

But let's not do an incomplete job of curing the disease.
posted by actionpotential at 8:52 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

New Hamster is the Indiana of New England somehow

Not to mention their support for unreasonable subsidies to the running wheel and pellet industries.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:53 AM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

also, what we see in the media needs to change - many people believe that what they see on TV and read in magazines reflects what reality should be like.

I am like this.
When I watched Threes Company and read Archie comics, and watched American Pie, I thought that in reality everyone hooks up at the end, especially the men.
So when this wasn't happening for me, and continued not to happen for me, I had an internal crisis to handle.

In my particular case, I chose to assign blame inward - it was my fault. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't cool enough. I needed to change. And this self-blame was natural for me (maybe because of my low self-esteem?)
But maybe some people will choose to assign blame outward - this is everybody's fault but mine. And the problem with this is that it's easy to find fellow conspirators who have this attitude, and this is where the problem begins.

I know that entertainment isn't going to change to address societal issues, but as long as it continues to be a primary caregiver for a lot of young people, and is a key element of many conversations, we need to be more judgmental on the crap that it produces.

Sure not everyone who watches Bugs Bunny is going to shoot a hunter in the face, but some people, like myself, are probably more desensitized to violence than others!
posted by bitteroldman at 8:56 AM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

I hope that everyone here who wants guys like this to be understood and healed and all is off in their spaces (online and off-), talking to them and listening to them and working to understand and heal them. It's all very well to observe that they must be wounded and need help, but it nearly always comes off as "Yeah, but, these guys..." and it's not exactly a new observation. So go, go help already.
posted by rtha at 8:57 AM on April 26, 2017 [51 favorites]

the (apparently significant) number of angry misogynist swing voters

It is perhaps worth revisiting this old TAL episode on the increasing polarization of New Hampshire's politics - albeit keeping in mind that it was recorded during the 2012 cycle and was followed by a swing to the left. MRAs make an appearance.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:00 AM on April 26, 2017

I don't think "not getting everything my own way all the time" qualifies as a trauma, either.
I don't feel like "the plight of the boy who wants to date the prettiest girl in school" is particularly unexamined at this point.

I know you don't believe that these are the only problems that boys have!
posted by bitteroldman at 9:00 AM on April 26, 2017

Exactly, rtha. This is why I asked "who is 'we' in this sentence"; usually, "we" secretly means "the women part of we."

Guys, we can't fix toxic masculinity for you without your participation.
posted by KathrynT at 9:00 AM on April 26, 2017 [76 favorites]

Ok, bitteroldman. What do YOU do to empathize with these guys? How much emotional labor do you expend on a daily, weekly, annual basis to help them understand both the roots and the effects of their pain?
posted by KathrynT at 9:02 AM on April 26, 2017 [20 favorites]

It's not about healing guys like this; they obviously can't be reached and aren't worth saving. It's about reaching guys before they get to this point. If someone feels that society has completely written them off, then they're more likely to be radicalized and join in with the MRA crowd.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:04 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

This latest verse same as the first: Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them. My giveafucks for men afraid that women are laughing at them are in vanishingly low supply (especially because HEY GUESS WHAT men laugh at women too and I have a whole adolescence full of male mocking and rejection of my own, thanks)

These guys think that being a woman--any woman, every woman--affords you some kind of untouchable status. As usual, they are only regarding 5% of the world's women as humans, becuase the other 95% of us who have deemed unfuckable at some point in our lives have experienced plenty of rejection, mockery, infidelity, low confidence, and basically your standard issue run of the mill relationship and dating problems (+ also sexual bullying and abuse before I even turned 16 + also a bit later, a year-long emotionally and sexually abusive relationship). I'm a woman who is really not particularly attractive (at my best in my youth I think the best I ever made it to was "cute") and kind of socially awkward. I have never in my entire life been able to snap my fingers and have dicks rain from the sky. Like these dudes should do, I had to adjust my expectations, learn to take rejection, learn to brush off mockery, and become a functional adult human capable of love and trust. Fortunately, unlike these dudes, I accomplished most of that by the time I turned 21, because (also unlike these dudes) I realized quickly that this shit was on me to figure out and no one was going to hold my hand or give me training wheels.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:06 AM on April 26, 2017 [167 favorites]

New Hamster is the Indiana of New England somehow; an enclave far more politically conservative than its neighbors. Never been sure why in either case.

On top of that, it's the destination for the Free State Project, which apparently has been more successful than I ever would have imagined. Fisher is from New Hampshire, and probably can't be considered a FSPer as such, but might be aligned with them.
posted by adamrice at 9:06 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Related: Angry White Men (slguardian)
posted by runcifex at 9:07 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

A couple comments deleted; first, let's skip a totally hypothetical derail about height. Second, folks who want to have a nuanced discussion of how to help young men with their suffering: this is not going to be a good place for that discussion. It's just a context thing-- this story is a really terrible starting point for that conversation.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:08 AM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them.

Part of the reason we're so fucked as a society is that men are afraid men will kill them too.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:08 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

I can feel empathy for straight men who are hurt / anxious / depressed / lonely. I get they need support and help and they deserve to be happy too. What I can't feel empathy for is the subcommunity of these people whose solution for their problem is to hate women. Fuck them.

One of the weirdest things to me about the whole MRA movement is the self-identified "beta males". Guys who've decided they are losers and embrace the loser identity, whining and complaining all the way. I mean I'm no alpha-hard-charger myself, but have some self respect. Take some responsibility for yourself. Also weirded out about how cuck has become a mainstream insult word. There's a lot of psychological badness wrapped up in that word.
posted by Nelson at 9:08 AM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]

5/5 wanted to date a woman making equal pay or better to them.

That's a surprising bullet point. I would have thought the MRA/RedPillers would want a woman who makes significantly less or stays at home. I'd have expected that a higher income would be seen as a challenge to their masculinity.
posted by sbutler at 9:12 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Redpillism is a combo platter of male entitlement ("I have a penis, that should be enough to get a woman,") societal and media bombardment about relationships and romance and sex, and zero to middling understanding that social interaction is not effortless or easy to master OR winnable via a Set of Ten Phrases and Actions That Will Make Any Woman Want You And Your Magnificent Genitals. Friend Zone is part of that mindset ("I said A, B and C, I did D, E and F, I bought her G and H and instead of following the rules and loving me, she FRIEND ZONED me! So unfair. Grumble grumble shallow bitches.")

There is substantial parallel with Trumpist populism -- you should have money, power, jobs, AND a trophy woman but THEY are stealing what is rightfully yours! -- spurred by the internet's natural tendency to enable people who blame similar people for their problems to find each other in large numbers and yell loudly.
posted by delfin at 9:12 AM on April 26, 2017 [24 favorites]

Men believe that they deserve this, that they are owed the pinnacle of womanly perfection just for...existing, and not being a flaming asshole

The whole deserved/owed thing still seems just so bizarre to me even after running into it in the wild. So much of it appears to be related to stupid, shitty tropes in film.

It does appear that overcoming even that very low bar gets many non-obviously sociopathic men a pass. I'm thinking for instance how James Deen (very much an asshole and sociopath, apparently) was considered a sensitive and appealing porn guy at least partially because gonzo porn is full of dudes who are obviously terrible.

But yeah, I'm on team blame shitty men for their actions, and blame their friends and internet communities for high-fiving or shrugging off the MRA/PUA/redpill bullshit instead of just being like "dude, wtf is wrong with you?"
posted by aspersioncast at 9:14 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I would have thought the MRA/RedPillers would want a woman who makes significantly less or stays at home. I'd have expected that a higher income would be seen as a challenge to their masculinity.

No, they are all TERRIFIED of women using them for money. Women who stay home to take care of children are LEECHES and NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

But also, if they don't stay home with a redpiller's child, they are UNNATURAL and NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 9:15 AM on April 26, 2017 [57 favorites]

Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser by Clarisse Thorn says that a little PUA can be good for men with social anxiety who don't want to do therapy, but the culture is extremely toxic.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:17 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'd rather not classify misogyny as a mental illness.

I can understand this POV, but in the interest of completely destigmatizing mental illness, so that it's no more shameful to discuss or poorly understood than a toothache or broken bone, I'd argue there might be value in acknowledging misogyny isn't mental illness, but some forms of mental illness can induce unwelcome, intrusive, and ultimately, almost hypnotically obsessive misogynistic, religious, or other kinds of thoughts. In those cases, it's better to understand that's the issue than to split hairs over whether it's fair to diagnose mental illness without qualification or without a consult. It's not clear this guy's mentally ill but he might be. That does have bearing on the ethics and practical realities of the situation, though no one should assume without clinical follow-up and diagnosis that mental illness is in play.

Anyone can become mentally ill temporarily or longer term. You don't have to be an other it's embarrassing to be identified with to get sick in the head anymore than to catch a cold. The differences between chronic mental disorders and short term, situational ones are about severity and longer term prognosis. The more overt symptoms alone can't tell the whole story, but they might point to something.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I imagine there are people out there doing the work of fixing toxic masculinity, in the same way that there are people out there doing the work of addressing systematic racism. Such work is not a good much discussed, because leading seminars and doing worker training is not particularly sexy and doesn't make for good copy.

Sympathetic outreach to individual, powerful leaders can have quite an effect - see, for instance, Daryl Davis's outreach to Klan members. However that work isn't trivial, and most hardcore MRAs would seem to have more of an extractive relationship with women rather than the contempt bring by the Klan. Further, the Klan is a white terrorist organization, while the random acts of violence by men against women are rather less organized.

If you want to battle MRAs, I guess, it seems more worthwhile to fight for those you love, to identify antifeminist ideas in your daily lived experience, and to vigorously oppose large MRA organizations like the red pill by making it clear that you think their ideas are bad.

Individual, in-person sympathy is fine. Sympathy for a stewpot of awfulness is unnecessary.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:23 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

I will add that I feel a little bad for the founders of Reddit, since they were some young white dudes who didn't know what they were doing. Well, now they know what they've been doing.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:25 AM on April 26, 2017

That's a surprising bullet point. I would have thought the MRA/RedPillers would want a woman who makes significantly less or stays at home. I'd have expected that a higher income would be seen as a challenge to their masculinity.

I think Redpillers are less concerned with "traditional gender roles" than assumed. They are obsessed with the notion that women are actively, knowingly, conspiratorially trying to harm them. One of their memes is that women will try to "catch" a wealthy man and steal all his money and then kick him to the curb, having gotten what they were after. A woman who is already a high earner may give them a sense of security that at least she won't do that to them. (Lost on them is the hypocrisy of their thinking that women are just a life support system for fuckable holes while decrying the idea that women might just think of men as a life support system for a bank account.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [30 favorites]

No, they are all TERRIFIED of women using them for money. Women who stay home to take care of children are LEECHES and NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

Yeah, it's this ugly, horribly fucked up cycle. If women make less than them, how DARE they expect the redpiller to support them! They're clearly just in it for the money! But once they start dating the redpiller, how DARE they let career come first!

Essentially, these guys want to find a girl who's making a ton of money and preferably has a lot saved up, first, so she can have something to 'bring to the table', and secondly, so that they know she's not a MONEY TRAP. Then they want to date her while she continues to make this money and contributes to the redpiller's lifestyle, then they want to marry her and have her stay home to take care of the babies, where they still gaze adoringly at the redpiller and consider him the breadwinner, without any lessening of lifestyle from when the breadwinner redpiller was only supporting himself.

It's this weird thing where they want to have the social approbation of Being! A! Man! With submissive adoring women, and Bringing! Home! The! Bacon! - but they also kind of recognize on some level that the economic and social times that made that are really not ever coming back. So they look down on women that still have that kind of socialization, while desperately wanting it for themselves anyway. It's horribly conflicting and fucked up and must honestly be terrible for them, but the pain they inflict on other people in this process is so very, very much greater.

I once had one of these men explain to me for two full hours how women who are rejecting men need to be nice about it and never mention any reasons and how they should make it all about the women's own failures and not the men's because then it might hurt the men's feelings. He followed it with a ten minute chatter about how he totally 'put some [ugly woman] who dared to hit on him in her place".
posted by corb at 9:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [49 favorites]

I don't want to feed the derail, but I also Have Thoughts on it. I have plenty of empathy and sympathy for men struggling with loneliness and meaninglessness in our society. The entrenched narratives telling both men and women that relationships are symbols of success are obviously damaging and hurt all of us.

Just, the kinds of men who end up identifying with RedPill, MRA type movements respond to that by going straight from almost but never quite acknowledging their pain into foaming-at-the-mouth misogyny, racism and hatred. That does a lot to burn sympathy. It also doesn't help that, as pointed out above, most of these men refuse to date women of color, trans women, disabled women, conventionally attractive women, not conventionally attractive women, overweight women, underweight women, women with higher paying jobs, women with lower paying jobs...

If you just write off most of humanity as beneath you and staple on some convoluted rationales justifying your increasing bigotry to yourself, then yeah, big shock, nobody wants to hang out with you anymore. We do need to have more empathy for people of both genders dealing with rejection, loneliness and meaninglessness in our society (because it's certainly not an exclusively masculine problem)...but MRAs are more of the "wound collector" mentality of intentionally inflicting harm to themselves and others, and that just needs to be shut down.
posted by byanyothername at 9:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

Couple comments deleted. actionpotential, please leave this alone now.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:32 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Dudes who think you have the answer and it is all about supporting lil dudes who will otherwise one day turn into dudes who hate women:

Please talk about how dudes can set an example for lil dudes.

Please open yourself to the possibility that what is happening to lil dudes isn't something as event-like as child abuse or bullying, but instead growing up in a society where dudes treat women like shit while maintaining successful careers, and women get told by dudes how to treat dudes so dudes aren't terrible.

Please ask people who aren't dudes what their lived experiences are like, because while you may be the most decent person in the world, they've all experienced things on the daily that are corrosive and horrible and normal. Just ask them what it's like to date, to work, to take public transit, to walk down the street.
posted by zippy at 9:36 AM on April 26, 2017 [61 favorites]

Asking what kind of trauma we need to heal in order to help male supremacists get over their own bullshit, is rather like asking about what kind of trauma we need to heal in order to help white supremacists.

For one thing, I'm highly skeptical of the narrative that male supremacists just can't help it because they're getting over trauma. About half of my male peers who survived hell (80% of that from men) in public school systems came out of the closet in adulthood (fancy that). I don't know how many of the rest buy into male supremacy. Many see male supremacy in different forms as a reason why we got hell.

No, at some point the male supremacist had to not only absorb the cultural misogyny around them, they had to adopt a particularly cult-like framing of their problems to become a redpiller. Right now, today, there's a big backlash against Bill Nye "the cuck guy" for discussing the Kinsey scale and plural genders. These supremacists don't just hate women, they hate men as well.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:40 AM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

Oh look. A bunch of men managed to turn a thread about a violent, rapey leader of a modern misogynist hate group turning out to be an elected official into a thread about male pain, rather than the pain this hate group and its ilk inflicts on women, which is at least several orders of magnitude greater.

What, the founder of a misogynist hate group is an actual state representative? LETS TALK ABOUT MALE TEARS, rather than how that might affect the actual targets of that hate.

If you don't realize that this behavior is literally part of the problem -- that prioritizing and empathizing with the comparatively minor injuries of men at the expense of the major injuries of women at the hands of those men is yet another way that women are dismissed and dehumanized -- then I don't have a lot of confidence in your ability to propose solutions. Because you are literally part of the problem.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:42 AM on April 26, 2017 [198 favorites]

Of course we need to change attitudes, but we also need to be better at providing empathy to men for problems such as finding dates, and love, even though they seem trivial compared to the problems that women face.

That is a cultural problem that long term would be better fixed through re-education and a cultural shift rather than through empathy. The lessons that boys in our patriarchal society are taught about women by their parents, schools, the media they consume (including video games) and where applicable, their religions are all very important. When they are taught to see women as subordinates, objects, prizes and/or conquests rather than people, their expectations are going to be skewed. Our culture encourages such attitudes on every level. Because of this, women have no choice but to navigate them. So do men, but we do have a choice.

It doesn't have to be one or another, and it shouldn't be a competition of whose problem is worse.

There is no competition. Women have it worse. That massively skewed power imbalance in favor of men needs to be acknowledged and addressed. Every single time we have one of these threads, women chime in with appalling examples of the way they have been treated by men while trying to live their daily lives. actionpotential said above that no one is born a misogynist. But many men learn to be that way from a very young age. From the language we use about women to the way they are treated on tv and the way they are portrayed in other forms of media, to the values being emphasized in our culture regarding which feminine ideals are more valuable to society than others -- we are immersed in a culture that sends very clear messages about what place girls and women have in our society.

It ain't as equals.
posted by zarq at 9:45 AM on April 26, 2017 [58 favorites]

Is there a link anywhere where I can find out what legislation this guy sponsored or co-sponsored, or how he voted? Eugh, what do you think his staffing procedures are like?
posted by KathrynT at 9:50 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

corb: I once had one of these men explain to me for two full hours how women who are rejecting men need to be nice about it and never mention any reasons and how they should make it all about the women's own failures and not the men's because then it might hurt the men's feelings. He followed it with a ten minute chatter about how he totally 'put some [ugly woman] who dared to hit on him in her place".

I admire your ability to control the fist of death that must have been unaccountably attracted to his nose around that point in time.
posted by pharm at 9:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [24 favorites]

Looking at male entitlement in its raw form the way corb describes should come with a pair of safety goggles and a hazmat suit. That shit is poison.

Dudes, if you want to help because less poison gets spewed at penis-havers, go for it. I don't have the time to sift through radioactive waste looking for the tiny germ of an MRA's soul that could be nurtured back to humanity.

This is not a problem women can solve for these men.
posted by emjaybee at 9:58 AM on April 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

KathrynT, here you go.
posted by runcifex at 10:01 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is not a problem women can solve for these men

And even framing it this way, as so many of the comments in this thread have done, is also part of the problem.

If you actually want to talk about justice, let's talk about how to solve the problems this causes for women. Like actual legislation and enforcement and oversight. Like dealing with harassment laws and the fact that domestic violence, while a predictor for every terrible thing ever, is treated as a minor crime. Or by actually classifying these things as terrorism with women as the targets.

You know how fish have no word for water? Yeah. The threats against women are ever present. Maybe we can center the conversation about how to deal with threats against women on actual women.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:03 AM on April 26, 2017 [30 favorites]

Like dealing with harassment laws and the fact that domestic violence, while a predictor for every terrible thing ever, is treated as a minor crime. Or by actually classifying these things as terrorism with women as the targets.

You know what, we don't even have to touch the issue of "he said she said" nonsense. Let's get one law - just one law, SOMEWHERE - passed criminalizing street harassment. Just one. I swear to god if it is seriously enforced I would either move or retire there, and I know I can't be the only one.
posted by corb at 10:07 AM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

If men spent as much time working with toxic men as they do racing to defend the honor of hashtag not all men we'd really get something accomplished and massively reduce toxic masculinity.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 10:12 AM on April 26, 2017 [48 favorites]

corb: I think it's entitlement, pure and simple.
... [List of entitled demands] ...

Not having grown up in this culture, I read this list with bewilderment. If we're talking about purely transactional relationships, why would a younger, prettier woman who is already making more money than them want anything to do with them? How much more driven and successful must a young woman be to make more money than an older white man (backwards and in heels), and what's her incentive to settle for these prizes? What does the endgame look like here?

But then life happened, I didn't finish writing the comment, and I came back to read this further comment from corb which perfectly explains how their endgame is supposed to work:

corb: Essentially, these guys want to find a girl who's making a ton of money ... they want to date her while she continues to make this money ... then they want to marry her and have her stay home to take care of the babies ...

And for the first time, I feel like I understand a certain segment of Trump voter. If they can't have this, they would rather have the world burn down rather than the uppity women take over. That explains why the "grab them by the pussy" tape just added to Trump's appeal in their eyes, and why they might even have voted for Obama but they wouldn't vote for "that bitch".

(Not all Trump voters, sure. But some of them.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:12 AM on April 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

I don't feel like "the plight of the boy who wants to date the prettiest girl in school" is particularly unexamined at this point.

The problem is the encultured tendency to treat women (and relationships with them) as trophies and regard having an attractive girlfriend/wife as validation of one's status as a man, and not having one as being A Loser; this is what needs to go.

Ironically, the MGTOW people seem to have half of the answer. In their mental model, Women are distinct prey-creatures one hunts for trophies. The world has shown them to be losers, so they ragequit, and swear not to have anything to do with Women again. If only they took the next step, rewriting this, expanding their idiosyncratic definition of Women to “humans who fall in the sexual trophy-prey category”, ending up with not dealing with human beings as trophy-prey, and then expanding the category of “dudes” they will associate with to include women they, of course, have no intention of having sex with. Then, at some point, they forget that they're a Loser Who Isn't Fit To Have A Girlfriend and end up in a relationship with one of their fellow “dudes” of the appropriate sex to them.
posted by acb at 10:13 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

It also doesn't help that, as pointed out above, most of these men refuse to date women of color, trans women, disabled women, conventionally attractive women, not conventionally attractive women, overweight women, underweight women, women with higher paying jobs, women with lower paying jobs...

Doesn't help them, maybe. Sure helps the women they're not dating, though! The cotton ceiling or whatever we're calling it now is a great filter for people who turn out to be dickheads.
posted by Dysk at 10:14 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Eugh, what do you think his staffing procedures are like?

I imagine they look fine, in the same way that Mike Pence's look fine. Poison does not need to be spoken, especially if you know your ideas are considered repugnant.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:14 AM on April 26, 2017

That's a surprising bullet point. I would have thought the MRA/RedPillers would want a woman who makes significantly less or stays at home.

They're frequently also caught up in some toxic masculinity in a failing economy, though not always. But I grew up with a surprising number of adult men who never worked but expected their wife to work and take care of the house while they did absolutely whatever (usually tinker around with old cars, etc.).

I also grew up hearing and reading about how this was due to the plight of poor rural white men, who don't have the good ol' coal mining and construction jobs they used to and thus fall into dissipation. And on the one hand, I was very sympathetic, of course it's terrible when you lose your job and livelihood and a lot of these men were my loved ones. But fuck yourself to death if the answer to that is forcing your wife to support you, raise your children and have dinner on the table at 6pm every night because you're sad and you don't want to work a pussy job like retail, and on top of that you lack any and all emotional regulation skills and have no interest in developing them so you can only work on a job site where there are no clients and you're allowed to discriminate against female or gay or nonwhite coworkers and sexually harass women. I used to have a lot more sympathy until I realized how much male pain always becomes a female problem.

I have a really hard time hearing about how middle class feminists impose their bourgeois morality on working class men (despite the fact that I often agree) because about 90% of the time, the person making the accusation forgot that working class women even exist.

Oh my god, a law against street harassment?!?!! Without even endorsing such a thing, it says something that I have never even THOUGHT of that.
posted by stoneandstar at 10:16 AM on April 26, 2017 [60 favorites]

Expect the next thing about this guy to be a interview/profile with a sympathetic, probably female interviewer where he talks about how hard it is to be a man and gee, I was only trying to foster discussion and let people see my point of view, y'know? Sideswipe at "the PC police," at least one pathetic anecdote, a drop of self-deprecating humor and a chaser of look how bold and unafraid of controversy I am. Interview concludes: "Hey, he's just a regular guy, maybe we shouldn't be too quick to judge."

Just, you know, so we're prepared with our scalpels of analysis, chainsaws of truth and flamethrowers of righteousness to dissect this shit, take it apart and burn it to the ground.
posted by Pallas Athena at 10:16 AM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

Oh my god. The legislation he co-sponsored falls mostly into two categories: adding new conditions into the qualifications for getting a weed card, and removing restrictions on gambling. The rest of his bills involve minutiae of government administration, with a few exceptions: a "campus free speech" bill, a bill banning conversion therapy (sometimes the sun even shines on a dog's ass, I guess), and a bill repealing the ban on mobile device use while driving.

I live in a state where marijuana is legal for recreational use, so believe me, I have no problem with that. But if a Redpiller were to get into government? That's pretty much exactly what I'd expect their legislative impact to look like.
posted by KathrynT at 10:18 AM on April 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

One of the weirdest things to me about the whole MRA movement is the self-identified "beta males". Guys who've decided they are losers and embrace the loser identity, whining and complaining all the way. I mean I'm no alpha-hard-charger myself, but have some self respect. Take some responsibility for yourself.

Personally, I'm taking the initiative to redefine “alpha male” as a straightforward synonym of “jerk” or “asshole”. (“Did you see that alphamale cut into the front of the queue?”)

Given that “alpha male” is a discredited term with as much scientific validity as phlogiston, and now is merely a mumbo-jumbo word used by assholes to justify their own assholery, it could work. Also, it could end up back-forming into a new etymology, perhaps along the lines of buggy, unfit-for-purpose alpha versions of software/hardware.

Who's with me?
posted by acb at 10:22 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

It is depressing that this conversation isn't touching on Fisher's statements as a candidate for the NH state legislature or his attempts at legislation once he took office. This is an elected lawmaker who holds toxic views about women and feminism and who is ALSO arguing that women cry 'rape'. From the Daily Beast link: As a candidate for state representative, Fisher proposed bringing concerns about the supposed plague of false rape accusations into the statehouse. Hosting a forum on Reddit under the username RobertFisherforNH, Fisher sought ideas to prevent “innocent people [from] receiving jail time.” He argued that because in rape cases “police err on the side of caution,” and show a high level of support for victims, the system was “susceptible to abuse” by women.

Among Red Pillers, the notion that women commonly abuse the judicial system for means of retaliation, or “cry rape” for attention, is viewed as a matter-of-fact element of the feminist “agenda.”

According to an analysis of Justice Department data by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), 46 out of 100 rapes are reported to police, nine are prosecuted, and three of those accused serve jail time.

Some of you are arguing that we should feel sorry for him and for the community of like-minded assholes he gathered together. That strikes me as deeply fucked up.

Who gives a shit if he didn't get enough hugs as a child? He's not a teenager. He's 31 years old and wants to use his power as a legislator to try to get laws passed against rape victims.
posted by zarq at 10:24 AM on April 26, 2017 [84 favorites]

The problem with the whole idea of, "We should seek to understand what makes red-pillers embrace a toxic mentality" is that they *do* decide to handle their emotional problems by embracing the worst aspects of a patriarchal system in order to actively subjugate women. It's not enough to focus on their career, they have to make money in order to attract bitches. It's not enough to work on their social skills in order to facilitate interactions with women in a social setting, they actually make a point of approaching seemingly vulnerable women and actively victimizing them. It's not enough to seek out a fulfilling relationship with a woman, or even more than one--they want a woman who is servile, who has no needs, whom they don't even have the obligation to be nice to, much less treat like a human being. Just this whole idea that they're "rising up" against some "bullshit" system where you have to treat women like human beings in order to "get anywhere with them". The purpose isn't even to boost one's own self-esteem or even to be well-thought of by women, but to be well-thought of by other men.

I don't give a shit why somebody's personal emotional damage makes them treat people like walking sheets of Kleenex, to establish a hierarchy where, by definition, a group of people exist specifically to be exploited and mistreated. That's the point where it stops being reactive and starts being proactive.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [26 favorites]

If we're talking about purely transactional relationships, why would a younger, prettier woman who is already making more money than them want anything to do with them?

Because her fluffy little ladybrain has been completely scrambled by the powerful manly musk he exudes, reducing her to meek, submissive putty in his alpha-masculine hands; such are the perks of being an Archon of Gor, like The Donald.
</🍔>
posted by acb at 10:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

If you actually want to talk about justice, let's talk about how to solve the problems this causes for women. Like actual legislation and enforcement and oversight. Like dealing with harassment laws and the fact that domestic violence, while a predictor for every terrible thing ever, is treated as a minor crime. Or by actually classifying these things as terrorism with women as the targets.

And it really is terrorism, complete with bigots and abusers arming themselves to the teeth, and being aided and abetted by bigoted lobbying groups:

posted by zombieflanders at 10:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [28 favorites]

I deeply miss NH and often imagine how wonderful it would be to go back home after I finish my PhD and can get the hell out of Ohio, ruled as we are by our horrifying anti-women governor. Then I remember that local politics in NH are run by the literal equivalents of the worst assholes from my high school, even with the all-women delegation in Congress, and everything is terrible.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:27 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

the most toxic part of so-called toxic masculinity is the unquestioned part that has won over nearly everyone, even feminists and even feminist women: the conviction that woman-hating and abuse always comes from insecurity and lack of confidence. the more entitled and secure and confident in his superiority a man seems, the more certain people become that he's hiding some bitter self-hatred deep down where nobody can see.

because the worst thing a man can be is uncertain, diffident, insecure, careful, concerned about his own appearance and manner and way of being, right? Like some kind of neurotic woman. and therefore misogynists, being the worst of men, must harbor these pathetically unmasculine traits. there is a problem with the logic here, but people never seem to mind.

in fact you really can be a total prick because you are so very secure in yourself and your place in the world and your sense of being masculine and a man and in control. None of those traits are unmixed goods even though now and then a nice man happens to possess all of them.

we would all be better off if we stopped praising the right kind of secure masculinity and remembered that masculinity is a neutral aesthetic preference and not a value or a moral imperative of any kind, for anyone of any sex. and that anxious insecurity on its own never hurt anybody. In the meantime, since that will never happen, why not call misogynists insecure if the aim is to provoke them and make them feel bad, I guess. but I am not sure it's as effective as one would like.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:36 AM on April 26, 2017 [57 favorites]

We'd be better off if we stopped equating masculinity with having power over other people.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:41 AM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

To become a red-piller is to start from a position that women aren't human. I am pretty shy and anxious and had very little success dating before I was married (and I guess I have to see if that's still true), but it never occurred to me that women were the problem.

I did a lot of "woe is me, alas and alack" lamenting to myself, but recognized the problem was me. And the laments, at their core, was the recognition that to fix the issues required more than waving a magic wand around, and that having a penis is not equal to having a magic wand (in that context, anyway).

I believe that kind of self-awareness is not really something that's easy to change from the outside. What we can do is call out that stuff as bullshit and refuse to acknowledge it; maybe if enough fellow males do so it will sink in eventually.

But if we're going to spend emotional energy, let's support the women affected by this bullshit first, rather than holding out yet another hand to the woefully repressed reddit dude demographic.
posted by maxwelton at 10:44 AM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

I think a lot of the exploration liberals do of "but WHY are they like this? Let's help!" is an attempt to fight off despair, to find a way to fix this, instead of just saying "Welp, a solid chunk of humanity, most of them of a particular gender, is just shitty and dangerous, fight 'em or avoid 'em, there's nothing else to do, they're a waste of skin."

Our liberal-ness tells us that you can't other fellow humans, and so we chase our own tails trying not to other the very people that other us.

Since the election, though, I have shucked off this burden, at least when it comes to grown men. Guys like this are not only broken, but dangerous, and my energy has to go to protecting myself and others that they would hurt. A young boy who has absorbed toxic patriarchal messages, I would talk to in hopes he's still reachable; a woman who internalized them, I might talk to. A grown man, no.
posted by emjaybee at 10:49 AM on April 26, 2017 [92 favorites]

Yeah I think that does circle back to the Great Liberal Hope, that if you just understand and explain and make clear and empathize and find common ground, surely this time they'll realie what they're doing wrong.

Of course the problem with that is like Trump voters (which they probably are), it's not only that they don't care, it's that they think you're a sucker for approaching them with the soft and earnest cuddliness of a kindergarten teacher.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 10:53 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Seriously, this guy is the opposite of underconfident. He owns a business, he ran for office, he moderates some idiot board. Whatever insecurity he has is not debilitating; it sounds like women just don't like him, because he comes off as a psychotic rapist. If we want to "help" him, sounds a lot like we need to force some woman into loving him, I guess? Any sane person would think "I'm successful now, why don't they like me? Is it possible that instead of all my ideological garbage, they could be animated by normal human desires?" Any non-malicious person who was perhaps less self-aware would say, "well, women don't like me, I'm hopeless, I give up. I guess I'm just not loveable." It takes a motivated malicious person to go this far, and he can go straight to hell and burn there.

If we want to pity him we'll have to come up with something better than "underconfidence."
posted by stoneandstar at 10:54 AM on April 26, 2017 [22 favorites]

It's because liberals forget that politics is about power; not rhetoric, not empathy, not whatever.

They never forget, because they have the power, and they love it, and they don't want to lose it. We're the rubes who grew up empathizing with our oppressors because it was the only way to get by. They don't give a shit about us until we threaten their stuff.

It's different when you talk about people suffering from abuse or real material deprivation; you may not condone what they do but you work to change the social conditions. Here, there is no urgent, pressing problem-- just some shitheads who want more than they deserve.

Possibly the social conditions are physical and emotional abuse as it relates to masculinity; but feminists already care about that. Empathizing with them as beautiful individuals is a useless waste of time.
posted by stoneandstar at 10:56 AM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

(As for why regressive, misogynist dudes want high-status/high-earning women, I suspect that a not insignificant number get off on the idea of dragging them down, crushing their independence, and turning them into compliant housewives, or at least trophy wives. This doesn't necessarily conflict with the idea of wanting a woman who's not going to be a "gold digger" or whatever other justifications they use to themselves and each other.)
posted by tobascodagama at 10:56 AM on April 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

Once upon a time, I was a 20-something queer geek with bad skin, few social graces, and an embarrassing number of hookups with people of diverse genders and sexualities. They almost always started from long nights having extended conversations about comics, television, magazines, music, religion, or the latest information technology. All were attractive to me, usually because they had interesting things to say, interesting things that they loved, or interesting music we played on long drives to places we made interesting. I've been partnered to one for almost 25 years now. So I've never really understood the "geeks can't find love" myth underlying redpillism.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:02 AM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

In this case is there an excuse for this guys behavior? Nope. He is an adult. He chooses to do this.

Is there an explanation for why he chooses do this? Probably? Possibly? Is it worth it to explore the causes and sustenance of his misogyny? Sure as an academic exercise perhaps but not as a moral one. It won't change who he is or what he has done and it certainly won't excuse it.
posted by srboisvert at 11:13 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

As for why regressive, misogynist dudes want high-status/high-earning women...

I would also include the general social perception that a highly successful and accomplished woman is equivalent in value to a man who is merely functional.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:25 AM on April 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

If someone has polio, it's too late to vaccinate them. But that doesn't invalidate the vaccine for everyone else.

Getting women to be treated like, y'know, fully recognized human beings requires a major cultural shift on many levels: behaviorally, legislatively, law enforcement, examples in entertainment media, prominent role models, a willingness on all levels for people to call out bullshit as bullshit in public and not back down. How a person ended up as a raging misogynistic phallus is pretty meaningless to someone he's threatening or demeaning or whose door he's kicking down. But finding ways to stop the consequences of the hatred of the irredeemables also involves finding ways to keep those potentially on that path from buying in, and yeah, empathy and education and examples are part of that.

Particularly when, as the OP demonstrated, it is quite easy for young men to find communities who openly endorse and promote those actions and prejudices. The anti-woman Klan doesn't just exist, they're fucking recruiting on our kids' computers. We can't wipe away assholes like this guy from existing but we can try to have less of them in coming generations.
posted by delfin at 11:26 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

And I wouldn't overlook the influence of porn storytelling since it's something these guys are steeped in. Think of The Fappening on Reddit: hundreds of the world's most beautiful women all there for you to look at. Junk of most porn storylines: even if you're a pizza delivery guy or an old grandpa or whatever, hot, nubile 18 year olds are just dying to have sex with you. Horny singles are in your area, scream the banner ads. The entire narrative is that even Robb jeremy when he looked like a Mario Brother can have sex with gorgeous women that look like porn stars. Of course Neckbeard McFedora thinks he's entitled to the hot professional woman that has the sex drive and repertoire of a porn star but hasn't been sullied with another man's penis. That's what everything in his life is telling him.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:46 AM on April 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

But fuck yourself to death if the answer to that is forcing your wife to support you, raise your children and have dinner on the table at 6pm every night because you're sad and you don't want to work a pussy job like retail, and on top of that you lack any and all emotional regulation skills and have no interest in developing them so you can only work on a job site where there are no clients and you're allowed to discriminate against female or gay or nonwhite coworkers and sexually harass women.

This describes a lot of now-ex-husbands of women I know (and rest assured exactly zero of them are contributing any child support funds and 100% of them do things like dump a sick child back at mom's house even though it's his weekend to have the kids, because all the non-fun elements of parenting are women's work). I just can't even wrap my mind around the concept of this mindset. Making someone else deal with my shit because I don't wanna and reasons has not been an option since I was about 10.

I mean, raise your hands if you know multiple men who live their lives 24/7 basically in a full-body pout that they are not literally sitting on a golden fucking throne. Because for me this is a non-zero number, and I count myself actually incredibly lucky that the vast majority of men in my life (family and friends) are non-awful. But I have come into contact with enough of these guys that I'm pretty sure the number in the general population is disturbingly high.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:04 PM on April 26, 2017 [36 favorites]

So I've never really understood the "geeks can't find love" myth underlying redpillism

I think there's a couple of differences between that kind of geek and the redpillers:

- RPs believe they are entitled to the highest-value women: traditionally hot ones. Not all geek women are that, and overall they are not really into being entitlements anyway.
- Their fandom is competitive, not collaborative. They need to know the most information about X, and they need to beat other men at knowing the most. What women know is of zero import, and there is no point in talking to them about it. They will sit up all night telling you everything they know about X if you only listen and admire their shiny collection of facts and/or objects but do not attempt to engage.

I do not buy into any trauma model of misogyny. It is cultural, it is taught, it flourishes in men who got lots of hugs and all the right extracurricular activities and whatever. I like this as a starter article: 5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained To Hate Women.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:05 PM on April 26, 2017 [29 favorites]

Think of The Fappening on Reddit: hundreds of the world's most beautiful women all there for you to look at. Junk of most porn storylines: even if you're a pizza delivery guy or an old grandpa or whatever, hot, nubile 18 year olds are just dying to have sex with you

Ugh, I recently watched a grandpa scrolling through bikini shots on instagram while waiting for a 6:00am flight. The Gaze never gets tired!
posted by armacy at 12:11 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

If we want to "help" him, sounds a lot like we need to force some woman into loving him, I guess?

No. I think the answer to helping him is to find some way to communicate to him he's being a psychotic rapist that doesn't immediately trigger an angry response and increased grip on his persona.

Remember, you can see he's being an asshole (and by being so, he is being harmful) - but he doesn't agree. Getting him to agree with you is the challenge.

I've said it before, but people don't like to be shamed or told they're wrong. When they are, they go full tilt double down on the behavior or action that caused them to be told they're wrong. Changing this is the key, but requires a big shift in the way our society thinks. It is happening, albeit slowly, but at least it's happening. It's just going to take several more generations.
posted by INFJ at 12:13 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Fisher has given a public statement admitting to being the man behind the screen names, but it's not who he is now and he has no intention of resigning his seat:

Beyond insisting that he has no intention of resigning his seat, Fisher declined to comment on the report. Instead, he provided a lengthy written statement explaining that he "lived through a nightmare" in his early 20s and "said some injudicious things about the opposite sex following a bad breakup." He said he would not comb the internet to find the source and context of remarks attributed to him, but let those who question him "judge if that sounds like something I believe." He said that conclusions drawn from these remarks "border on slanderous." [ . . .]

"I'm disappointed that this sort of attack has replaced real news," Fisher wrote in his statement, "but it strengthens my position and resolve that fighting for equal rights is more important today than ever. Here's my message to the public," he continued, "I will continue to stand strong for men's rights and the rights of all."

Republican Governor Chris Sununu and NH House Speaker Shawn Jasper (Republican) have both called for Fisher to resign.
posted by gladly at 12:27 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

Huge parts of this discussion made me physically sick to my stomach. Are we seriously still in the part where we have to convince people that:

Guys like this are a dime a dozen;
They are mostly not mentally ill;
This is not because they just need "someone" (a woman, let's be honest about what we mean here) to patiently walk them through the muck, holding their hand and telling them how special and great they are every step of the way;
This is not because they are not loved enough, nor is it because by not loving them we (women) are "pouring salt on their wounds";
Christ all fucking mighty what the fuck, I am so tired of this shit, and sorry for the cursing but I am at the end of my rope here.

Stop asking women to do the emotional labor of making men who are shitty less shitty, for two reasons: (1) We are already doing this, have already done it, and will be asked to do it again and again and again (I cannot tell you how many shitty men I have interacted with, lived with, loved, etc. in my short time on earth), and (2) This should not be our job. Why should we focus on helping this guy, or guys like him, over helping the women that he and his ilk actively harm, day in and day out? Why are we still discussing them and their pain? Why can't we please, just once, for maybe one minute, focus on the women who are being hurt? Why is that so hard?
posted by sockermom at 12:28 PM on April 26, 2017 [87 favorites]

Doesn't this just say it all?

"I will continue to stand strong for men's rights and the rights of all."
posted by cooker girl at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2017 [24 favorites]

My sister eloquently phrased this as expecting women to be "missionaries for assholes".

As Batman would say, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."
posted by Autumnheart at 12:40 PM on April 26, 2017 [28 favorites]

"lived through a nightmare" in his early 20s and "said some injudicious things about the opposite sex following a bad breakup."

Do the early 20s extend into the early 30s now? Or does he not consider "hot women are a cartel" to be "injudicious?"
posted by uncleozzy at 12:41 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

sockermom, to use a metaphor: I see it as a viral infection. Something like the common-cold/upper respiratory infection.

We can alleviate the discomfort the viral infection causes with medications to reduce fevers, dry up the sinuses, soothe the headaches. But new people will still keep being inflicted by the virus and having to be treated for the misery it causes.

Wouldn't it be cool if we, while treating the misery, also manage to find a way to vaccinate against the virus? That way the virus just stops inflicting people and we don't have to worry about those who suffer because there won't be any.

I really don't think that people here are suggesting that we stop treating the misery caused by the virus, but let's look for a vaccine too.
posted by INFJ at 12:41 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

If someone is called, willing, and trained to restorative justice with apologists for rape, harassment, and abuse, they're probably better and healthier people than I am.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:42 PM on April 26, 2017

New Hamster is the Indiana of New England somehow; an enclave far more politically conservative than its neighbors. Never been sure why in either case.

A combination of Vermont-envy and fear of the redcoat menace upstairs?
posted by Apocryphon at 12:47 PM on April 26, 2017

sockermom, to use a metaphor: I see it as a viral infection. Something like the common-cold/upper respiratory infection.

This makes it sound like it's just a minor inconvenience that makes people feel crappy for a few days and then it goes away. Not like something that actually ruins people's lives or kills them.

I think rabies might be a better comparison. After all, there's a vaccine for that too. But once there's a report of a critter walking around foaming at the fucking mouth, you don't encourage everyone to be understanding about how shitty rabies must feel for the sufferer. You send out a bulletin saying "Avoid the rabies at all costs!" and you go get the net before they bite anyone.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:58 PM on April 26, 2017 [38 favorites]

I agree that common cold virus isn't the best comparison. Mostly I picked it because we can't cure or prevent it and have to ride out it's affects.
posted by INFJ at 1:05 PM on April 26, 2017

For your further amazement:

Fox Host Denies He Made A Sexually Suggestive Comment About Ivanka Trump

They just can't help themselves, even when it's the boss's daughter.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:13 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've often thought about the fact that patriarchy was conceived of and implemented first in a phase where about 50% of the top patriarchs of society would die early, mostly in battle and illness: for example, in a sample of noblemen in the Wars of the Roses about 40% make it to age 60 (http://www.mn.uio.no/math/english/research/projects/focustat/the-focustat-blog!/got_history1.html). It's pretty easy to see most brutal aspects of the patriarchy as stemming from this, especially when you reckon that the death rates are pretty unequal. Like for the peasantry in the Black Plague, life for a nobleman in a more patriarchal society after the peace was great because everyone else male is dead.

This actually happened pretty straightforwardly for American men 1930-1960, what with everyone else in the world being dead, mostly, from WW2. This, I think, defines there the winding path towards political violence for the misogynists, or at least towards the conditions where patriarchy does the patriarchy thing the most. The ideological basis of the USSR demanded feminism, but patriarchical attitudes, including a ban on abortion, lowered women's workforce participation, natalist policy, and other things popped up from the 1930's on because they sent so many Soviet men to die. So if it's demonstrated that you need peace and bread for feminism, and you're that much of a misogynist...
posted by hleehowon at 1:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

The first exposure I had to the PUA/misogynist cult was on AM radio. There was a host named Tom Leykis who had a set of rules for getting laid called Leykis 101. I call it a cult, because it really is led by people who influence impressionable people, sound credible and offer enough "techniques" to get men to believe that this is how to get what they want (when what they want is sex).

I also read a detailed web site about ladder theory. This is the first time I was exposed to the concept of the "friend zone."

Another personality that is (I hate to admit it, but I find his stories immensely entertaining, even though they are clearly depraved) popular among the PUA crew is Tucker Max.

I think the Internet changed everything. The Internet allowed for forums, bulletin boards, usenet groups and now sites like Reddit to allow men to collaborate and form their PUA cult more fully. It honed the techniques and predators now have a lot of resources to choose from.

It's been going on for a long time, but the easy access to information, just through Google, is going to be hard to counter...
posted by Chuffy at 1:18 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I can't wait for the day I can vote for someone who makes zero tolerance of misogyny the basis of their platform.

We haven't had that yet. Think about that.

Count me as one of the people disgusted by this thread (and in general by men on the left who assume they are adequately feminist, do no work on that, and then jump into conversations like this -- or like about whether it's acceptable for progressives to compromise or "negotiate" on reproductive rights -- as though they actually deserve to be heard).

This is really not good enough. We're not asking for a lot. Just to be treated as actual people who's suffering matters in proportion to its severity.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:37 PM on April 26, 2017 [25 favorites]

Also, my personal go to metaphor for misogynist hate groups is fast-moving zombies with a selective preference for women. And people just kind of shrug whenever they find one.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:39 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

The virus metaphor is ridiculously useless in this case. It would be as if literally everybody has the virus, most show some symptoms, some show a lot of symptoms, and a large group of people benefit from both the virus and the symptoms and would do anything to prevent a vaccine from being invented. And in the meantime, most of the pleading is aimed at the people dying (non-metaphorically a lot of the time) to come up with vaccine.

On preview, my thinking is like schadenfrau's. I originally had something written out about it being like Rage from 28 Days Later, but figured the metaphor thing was already crappy enough.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:46 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

I think the Internet changed everything. The Internet allowed for forums, bulletin boards, usenet groups and now sites like Reddit to allow men to collaborate and form their PUA cult more fully. It honed the techniques and predators now have a lot of resources to choose from.

It's been going on for a long time, but the easy access to information, just through Google, is going to be hard to counter...

These PUA sites/subreddits seem to rise to the top of the results for a lot of innocent keywords too, so the chances of running into this are unnervingly high. I can't count the number of times I've searched Google about some completely common relationship question or something and see the first page of results be filled with "how to win in dating" PUA articles.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:49 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Seriously, it is STUNNING in this day and age that no politician has kept a robust platform that says we need to combat sexism and misogyny. Fuck this. Myself, and women everywhere have had enough of this shit. Help us or we will step over you.
posted by agregoli at 1:49 PM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]

"But can't we just think about how hard it must be for a lot of men to think of women as fully actualized human beings, and have some sympathy for their struggle? Can't we just be satisfied with, I don't know, gradually acknowledging women as more and more human over time? To kind of ease these dudes into the idea? I mean you're thought of as human at least 35% of the time right now, which is better than nothing."

No.
posted by Autumnheart at 1:51 PM on April 26, 2017 [33 favorites]

Man, ladder theory. That takes me back. If has a real gut appeal despite also being completely bogus.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:53 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

No. I think the answer to helping him is to find some way to communicate to him he's being a psychotic rapist that doesn't immediately trigger an angry response and increased grip on his persona.

Remember, you can see he's being an asshole (and by being so, he is being harmful) - but he doesn't agree. Getting him to agree with you is the challenge.

I've said it before, but people don't like to be shamed or told they're wrong.

This... is crazytown. I mean, I could infiltrate the KKK and try to fix that while I'm at it.
posted by stoneandstar at 1:53 PM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]

Huge parts of this discussion made me physically sick to my stomach.

Same. It also makes me feel extremely tired and sad.

I do not know a single woman among in my acquaintance who has not been harmed by men like this-- and I am including women who men consider "undateable" because they do not meet cultural standards of beauty, despite being kind and brilliant and stalwart. Not one.

Also, please understand that when I say I do not know a single woman, I mean numerically, not marital status-- my married friends have also been hurt by men like this. Sometimes those men were their husbands, sometimes not, but there is zero way to shield yourself from the poison this mindset forcibly injects into our culture.

It is everywhere, and to be told, again and again, that the villains willingly hurting other people are the ones who deserve our sympathy and understanding is just...more poison.

Women are people. We are not nursemaids for wounded psyches, who should be forced to endure constant agonies to help other humans act like humans. We have also been rejected and mocked and not dated and sexually humiliated, and I am tired of being told I should have sympathy for men who have experienced these things when those same men have approximately zero sympathy for me, or for women whose experiences have been exponentially worse.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 1:53 PM on April 26, 2017 [61 favorites]

"You know, you're never going to win those men over to thinking of women as human beings, if you act so antagonistic about it. Why should they have sympathy for you if you don't have any for them?"
posted by Autumnheart at 1:58 PM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

The one good thing about the internet providing a voice for these folks worst impulses - it's allowing us to point more and more at behavior in black and white as perfect examples of this shit.

For instance, here in LA the incumbent of Council District 1, Gil Cedillo, who leaves some things to be desired, is locked into a run of with ur-white dude, bike fanatic, etc, Joe Bray-Ali. The other week Joe got hit with an old video online for the "Ask a Mexican" column that put him in a bad light, but hey, humor column by a Mexican dude - chill out.

Now they're publishing comments that he's admitted or his from voat.co - aka the place you go when reddit refuses your shitty behavior. Most of his posts are racists and fat shaming, but it feels like the same action from a position of impunity.

So maybe, just maybe... exposing more of this crap in a way you can't dodge will, at the very least, do something.

And man, as a lonely guy in my 20's I remember feeling terrible about myself and getting angry about the loneliness. Some of this PUA/MRA crap was around back then and felt awfully re-assuring and seductive. "My dissatisfaction isn't my fault! It's those people's! It's unfair they're treating me this way." If I hadn't spent a lot of time learning from my mom and my sister about what they experienced and how strong they were, I could totally see the allure of allow myself to slip into that mindset. Blah, that would have been a horrible hateful fate.

People is people, people. 98% of the goal of everyone is to be happy - maybe try and make that your worldview. (meant for those being hateful cause they're blind to it.)
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:06 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

These PUA sites/subreddits seem to rise to the top of the results for a lot of innocent keywords too, so the chances of running into this are unnervingly high.

Wouldn't it be great if Google etc cared about this as much as they cared when people pointed out all their incredibly racist search results

Wonder why they don't

Same goes for Facebook. Almost like these monopolist assholes are begging to get regulated.
posted by schadenfrau at 2:10 PM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I wonder what it's like to grow up in an environment where it is literally another person's job to make sure that I reach my full potential as a person. Like, between feminism and patriarchy, as a woman, it has always been my job. Indeed, my moral duty. Patriarchy tells me that it's my moral duty to be a role model and make up for men's inherent failings, which are actually my fault and my responsibility. Feminism tells me that I am capable of rising above the limitations that patriarchy sets on me, and provides me with the tools to do it. But I'm sitting here, imagining exactly what it must be like to be told, throughout my life, that I am entitled to a benefit that I am not personally responsible for achieving--that this is something other people are responsible for giving to me as my birthright.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:13 PM on April 26, 2017 [39 favorites]

This… is crazytown. I mean, I could infiltrate the KKK and try to fix that while I’m at it.

It does seem worth trying to convert prominent leaders of such groups - the KKK, etc.- but only with the assumption that they will publicly own their personality change and it will lead to the conversions of others. And it does no good to not forcibly reject any poison they spout in the process.

Let his friends and family care for him. That isn’t our job. Our job is to care for those we love by rejecting such beliefs and helping our friends to avoid them.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Who gives a shit if he didn't get enough hugs as a child? He's not a teenager. He's 31 years old and wants to use his power as a legislator to try to get laws passed against rape victims.

Exactly. It doesn't matter why, as far as whether he should be in office goes. He obviously isn't fit. There are people out there who've been sexually or otherwise abused by women caretakers who don't go on to become unrepentant misogynists or anything as destructive and socially harmful as starting misogynistic subreddits. Pain sometimes screws people up, but that's completely irrelevant regardless if it screws them up in ways that leave them unfit to trust with a job in public service. Even if you grant he might be ill, he should have done the work to heal himself long before ever entering public life, from my POV, and he should have disclosed it. Otherwise he's got no excuses.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Given that the consequences for confronting misogyny offline and online can involve different degrees and qualities of violence, asking survivors of that violence to educate potential offenders is asking far too much.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:29 PM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]

schadenfrau: Wouldn't it be great if Google etc cared about this as much as they cared when people pointed out all their incredibly racist search results.

Not sure if this stuff falls under "low quality content" but Google is at least making some noises about changing some things to "demote misleading, false and offensive articles online".

(Secondhand link because original source auto-plays video, ugh.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:25 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

At first I thought this mean the guy was a NH Congressman....I guess I shouldn't relax too much though
posted by thelonius at 3:46 PM on April 26, 2017

So, this is exactly the kind of real cultural threat from the unbridled fuckery of this toxic alt-right-ish thing that I've been ranting about recently, which I've been having difficulty articulating how pervasive and real it is.

I have spent a lot of time on reddit over the last ten years trying to approach people with mindsets like this. I've tried the gentle approach. I've tried debating with facts and citations. I've tried arguing quite energetically. I've also tried calling a spade a fucking shovel and calling out MRAs, TRP-ers and a lot of really toxic people, especially when they start popping off in other subreddits like dating/relationship subs, or all kinds of random and unlikely places.

As effective I can be at communication and diving into the fray, I would be honestly be surprised and suspicious if any of it actually helped or changed anyone for the better.

It's certainly made me more critical, self-aware and practiced at talking about some fucked up shit I'd rather not have to talk about - but I also doubt it's made me much of a better person as it's own thing, either.

At best I spoke up so that those whom may be harmed by these kinds of things know that they're not alone, and that there is a record of someone calling out the bullshit and not letting it slide.

But there is so much of it. It's not just reddit. It's not just 4chan or the chans. It's basically everywhere as a toxic current in our culture, and it isn't new.

What's new is... forums and the internet. People organizing around toxic beliefs and forming echo chambers. Some of which are publicly readable, throwing light on their own thoughts and words.

I don't know what the solution is besides a systemic cultural change. This would likely start in school with emotional intelligence as classwork and coursework, how people raise their children differently whether they're boys or girls.

But - of course - the far right would decry this as "re-education" and forced multiculturalism or some other happy horseshit, as though they were educated on the topic at all in the first place.
posted by loquacious at 4:16 PM on April 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Wouldn't it be cool if we, while treating the misery, also manage to find a way to vaccinate against the virus?
lol have fun dismantling the patriarchy and taking even a fraction of a percent of privilege and entitlement away from those who benefit from it so greatly, you know, the ones who are so concerned with "ethics." I mean, yeah, this would totally be "cool" but why is this discussion so focused on treating men's pain?

let's look for a vaccine too
I'm a little busy trying to be treated like a human by over half of the population, all the while dealing with lasting effects from being too close to too many men like this. Men need to fix the problem of toxic masculinity, not women.

we can't cure or prevent it and have to ride out it's affects.
Ride or die. Like literally, many women die. Being in a domestic violence situation, dating a dude like this guy, seriously, it puts you at risk for death, ptsd, lasting damage. Ask me how I know.
posted by sockermom at 4:21 PM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]

I gotta say, I am sort of confused by the talking point that redpill/PUA stuff promotes an entitlement or "blame others" mentality. A cursory reading of most of that material puts a big emphasis on fitness and developing interesting hobbies. Hell, even the first letter in the satirical D.E.N.N.I.S acronym stands for "demonstrate value." Now granted it's tough to actually maintain the discipline to do this if your end goal is just sex with women, but it's doable and puts all the action in your hands. Of course if you have the attitude towards women the redpill promotes then arguably you should just pay for it, but nevertheless I'm not seeing where the whole entitlement criticism is coming from.
posted by bookman117 at 4:33 PM on April 26, 2017

It's coming from our lived experience with PUA men and men like them.

Also note that the ability to have a hobby indicates leisure time, which indicates some level of privilege and entitlement, as you feel entitled to have that leisure time with which to perform said hobby. Finally, demonstrate value to whom?
posted by sockermom at 4:43 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

So this fellow isn't the first creepy misogynistic asshole to bear the name Robert Fisher (cw: descriptions of misogyny, fatal alleged domestic violence).

I'd really like to see the Robert Fisher who isn't on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list be drummed out of his legislative seat--the things he said about women make feel nauseous.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 4:48 PM on April 26, 2017

but it's doable and puts all the action in your hands. Of course if you have the attitude towards women the redpill promotes then arguably you should just pay for it, but nevertheless I'm not seeing where the whole entitlement criticism is coming from.

you just said it. you just spelled it out. right there: Men can get whatever they want if they just work for it. You just make yourself into what you and your friends decide women want, and then you get a woman. Because you earned it.

there is no way to believe that it's all "in your hands" and simultaneously have fond feeling about consent and mutuality. less nicely, the idea that you are guaranteed "success" with women if you follow the Plan, whatever the plan is, that is a rapist ideology. also, entitled.

The power is never all in your own hands if the women you want have any power of their own. these guys know this, and they don't like it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:50 PM on April 26, 2017 [40 favorites]

I'm not seeing where the whole entitlement criticism is coming from

I...I mean...What?

It comes from the fact that they think if they do these things they are entitled to the bodies of "high value women." Women are not people to them, they are prizes. You just have to press the right sequence of buttons and kill the right boss and then you get your princess.

Have you bothered to actually read this thread? Did it occur to you at all that maybe you could google your inane question, rather than expecting women who are already doing a shit ton of labor about an issue that is a real, personal threat to us, rather than some abstract hypothetical we get to wax philosophical about, to do the work for you?
posted by schadenfrau at 4:51 PM on April 26, 2017 [18 favorites]

queenofbithynia is even more dead on. The "you" in your comment is implicitly male. You don't even consider the woman's perspective, because it's not worth considering. We have no agency in your framing. We're just objects.

And objects you can "earn" by "working hard" because "the power is all in your hands."
posted by schadenfrau at 4:54 PM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

A cursory reading of most of that material puts a big emphasis on fitness and developing interesting hobbies. Hell, even the first letter in the satirical D.E.N.N.I.S acronym stands for "demonstrate value."

The demonstrating of value is intended for each other. All of it is a means to prove oneself better than all those "beta males". It's not intended to make them more appealing to women, except in the sense that gaining more female attention is evidence that one is a better class of man. None of it is directed at having better relationships. It's basically about maximizing one's personal brand.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:57 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Dan Savage's (updated )advice to teenage boys:
But don't despair....Your awkward/repulsive stage will pass. In the meantime, here's what you need to do: Worry less about getting your young teenage self laid and start thinking about getting your 18- or 20-year-old self laid. Join a gym and get yourself a body that girls will find irresistible, read—read books—so that you'll have something to say to girls (the best way to make girls think you're interesting is to actually be interesting), and get out of the house and do shit—political shit, sporty shit, arty shit—so that you'll meet different kinds of girls in different kinds of settings and become comfortable talking with them.

Some more orders: Get a decent haircut and use deodorant and floss your teeth and take regular showers and wear clean clothes. Go online and read about birth control and STIs, and learn enough about female anatomy that you'll be able to find a clitoris in the dark. Masturbate in moderation—no more than 10 times a day—and vary your masturbatory routine. I can't emphasize this last point enough. A vagina does not feel like a clenched fist, HUTB, nor does a mouth, an anus, titty fucking, dry humping, or e-stim. If you don't want to be sending me another pathetic letter in five years complaining about your inability to come unless you're beating your own meat, HUTB, you will vary your routine now so that you'll be able to respond to different kinds of sexual stimulation once you do start getting the girls.
(The above advice was for a straight teenage boy. Gay teenage boys should read "boys" where I said "girls," "anus" where I said "vagina," "prostate" where I said "clitoris," and "fist" where I said "fist.")
posted by brujita at 5:02 PM on April 26, 2017

As a woman, I can't think of a single thing women are encouraged to do that automatically grants you a free gorgeous houseboy who takes care of all your personal needs for you, including sexual needs. Women are told that if they work real hard at being the prettiest and most awesome woman in the crowd, a man might ~*select*~ them to be HIS free gorgeous housegirl who has the privilege of taking care of HIS needs. But there's no female equivalent to "Get your degree and climb the corporate ladder, and a supermodel will be dying to give you oral sex and a steak dinner just because you're such a stellar example of humanity." And if you're NOT the prettiest and most awesome woman, then fuck off and die because nobody cares about those women.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:03 PM on April 26, 2017 [54 favorites]

if you have the attitude towards women the redpill promotes then arguably you should just pay for it

ha ha I completely failed to convince my eyeballs to read this part even as I cut and pasted it. I will hold out hope that you mean "pay for it" like, you know, we'll make them all pay someday! that kind of paying for it, metaphor-style. but I have this deeply depressing feeling that you mean "pay for it" like "pay for it." It. You know, it: a woman to ejaculate in, on, or nearby, in return for money.

firstly, you know that's what they believe they're already doing, right? Every man pays for sex one way or another, that's a thing they think. secondly, I would love to hear the argument that says female sex workers, a group that already suffers more physical and verbal abuse from men than most other groups of women, should take on this particular brand of misogynists as a client base. Like how would that be good or safe for them, exactly? Or was their well-being not really part of the argument in the "arguably"?
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:08 PM on April 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

Hey, shit rolls downhill, am I right?

It's truly incredible how every time we try to "disrupt" male misogyny, it involves further dehumanizing a female underclass. Newsflash, if you're the type of cynical dude who hates Uber but doesn't understand this: any solution to a problem that involves buying your way out of it relies on people desperate enough to do it for you, typically for much less than its worth.
posted by stoneandstar at 5:38 PM on April 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

God, I'm just shuddering now, thinking about how red-pill types probably treat sex-workers. Yee-ikes.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 6:03 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I went to bed super-pissed off last night because whilst I was indulging my habit of watching "The Voice" clips on youtube to keep abreast of the current season before retiring for the night (hey, sue me, I'm as shallow as the next person) I was presented a clip of "Team Adam" (coached by Adam Levine, Maroon 5) singing "Hey Jude" as a tribute to Christina Grimmie, a former contestant who was on his team that year.

She died last year, age 22. My first thought was "fuck you, cancer", as there have been a few contestants who were survivors, and I couldn't picture her right away.

But no, it was Red Pill cancer which got her. Christina was fucking shot to death--for the crime of being an attractive woman who the murderer was sure was unavailable to him. I guess the only solution was to gun her down as she had a meet-and-greet with her fans.

I was actually thinking about MRA asswipes fueling this sort of thing as I fumed in the shower, and then today there's this thread.

Sorry, I guess her death is only tangentially related to the OT, but you can draw a fucking straight goddamn line between "Red Pill" skidmarks and some NRA-equipped garbage human shooting a woman who he had never met because she was pretty and he could never "have" her.

That officially ran me out of evens for garbage humans. Maybe I'll get more back in stock soon, but don't have high hopes. If they're in pain? Fuck 'em.
posted by maxwelton at 6:05 PM on April 26, 2017 [30 favorites]

on the brighter side, I'm not sure very many of them would even want to pay for "it." [1] like their ideal sexual transaction seems like it would be more like the Archer episode where Lana makes all the men in the office pay for the right to brag about having had sex with her in some vaguely degrading manner. and one of them says, but won't everybody else know I'm lying since they paid for the same thing? and she says, yeah, but what are they going to say about it? and it seems like a terrific deal to them all around and they all pay their money and stand around telling each other how great it was.

[1] in a better world, men who are so sexually unfortunate they feel they "have to" pay for "IT" are referring to hiring someone to dress, but more importantly, talk, like Tim Curry in a clown suit.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

Metafilter is a trip to read sometimes, as there will be such a mismatch between what is in my head before I open the comments, and then what is actually there. In this instance...

What was in my head: OMG that redpill freakshow was started by a dude who's an elected representative? Holy shit, I wonder what kind of hateful regressive shit he's sponsored or signed his name to. How are other politicians handling this now that the cat is out of the bag, like are they all kosher with his hateful misogyny because they're Republican fuckfaces? Or is this a bridge too far even for them? Have any women who have had doings with this dude come forward? Oh god, what's it like to work for this jagoff or intern for him? What a creep!!! He is in such a position of power both through that fuckstain of a subreddit and via being a lawmaker he probably has been able to hurt so many women.

*clicks*

What was in the thread: some men are so sad inside!!!! :'(
posted by supercrayon at 10:14 PM on April 26, 2017 [34 favorites]

What was in the thread: some men are so sad inside!!!! :'(

Just wanted to say that I think this is a misread, and that the thread had been full of plenty of people disputing the idea that red pill folks deserve sympathy and should instead be scorned. (An opinion I agree with.)
posted by Going To Maine at 1:32 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Not everyone gets the same kind of background that allows them to have the presence of mind necessary to not go down the path this guy did. I'd wager he's seen some shit and had bad parents and was raised in a community that didn't encourage compassion.

Haaahahahahaha aaaahahaha ha aha ahem hahaha LOL *cough* ahem.

After all the shit WOMEN are put through, have you ever seen any women legislators start a wildly successful subreddit promoting misandry?

Have you, um, ever seen anything successfully promote widespread misandry that gets translated into a regression of men's rights?

You do realize there are women raised in extremist homes and communities that are, at their very basis, misogynist. And yet!

I'm starting to see a lot of men in their late twenties/early thirties becoming deeply embittered at not having a wife or serious girlfriend, because They Have Been Told it's the measure of a successful man. The ones most outwardly successful seem to be the most vulnerable to this nonsense.

And yet! It's the outwardly successful white men, the ones with all the privilege they get in spite of bad families or communities, who are taking shit out on women.

I see it too. It's gotten to the point where I've learned to expect misogyny from successful men (including married ones) because at least that way I'm prepared when it happens. So far it always has. Mind, I keep myself open to the possibility it won't.

Guys who've gone through shit in their lives are, in my anecdotal experience, the most open-minded. Some really good conversations there.
posted by fraula at 4:47 AM on April 27, 2017 [29 favorites]

OPEN SCENE

*man walks up to woman on sidewalk, brandishes a gun and shoots her*
*woman collapses, bleeding out on sidewalk*
*ambulance races to the scene, EMTs tumble out of the vehicle*
*EMTs help man to gurney, do full-body check for injuries, slap blood pressure cuff on and start reciting statistics to each other*
*One EMT shouts into man's face, "Are you injured anywhere else? Can you tell me your name?" as they load man into ambulance*
*Inside the ambulance, EMTs anxiously monitor gauges, while one EMT tells the man, "Don't worry, sir, we've got the best people on this. You'll be well taken care of."*
*Camera pans back to woman, lying alone on sidewalk, nobody else in sight*

END SCENE

This is basically every conversation about misogyny and female-targeted violence ever.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:24 AM on April 27, 2017 [51 favorites]

Any violence committed by somebody wielding privilege, really. A white guy shoots up a black church, people wonder what went wrong with his life to lead him there. A black kid kills another kid in a gang-related shooting and he gets tried as an adult; nobody asks about the systemic problems that might have led him there.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:35 AM on April 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

Which is exactly my point. Nobody talks about the impact on the victim. Just how terrible it is that all these white guys are so injured inside that they commit all these violent acts! How do we stop these men? What can we do to change the way they think?

Well, we could throw them in fucking prison, and make it so they can't get guns, and start a national media campaign about how being violent to another person is fucking horrible. Instead of acting like it's inevitable and too hard to change, and that it would tremendously inconvenience all the white guys who want to own guns and say shitty things, but who stop short of actually shooting anyone, because it's more important for Freedom that way, and if you don't want to be shot then you should just stop doing things that piss off dudes with guns, like driving or walking outside or having a job or wearing yoga pants.
posted by Autumnheart at 6:01 AM on April 27, 2017 [13 favorites]

For example, in this particular case, Reddit could just ban the subreddit. But they don't, because reasons, even though it permeates absolutely horrible attitudes and behavior not just throughout Reddit but elsewhere in society. For some reason, it seems really important to dudes to make sure they have a place to talk about and make plans to be super shitty to women.
posted by Autumnheart at 6:07 AM on April 27, 2017 [20 favorites]

Well, we could throw them in fucking prison, and make it so they can't get guns, and start a national media campaign about how being violent to another person is fucking horrible.

We could even do simpler harm reduction things like: provide funding to actually test rape kits, provide funding for free counseling for rape victims, provide funding for helping women and children leave domestic violence situations and establish independent lives, provide free comprehensive reproductive healthcare. We could provide support to women and girls as a first step, without even getting to the issue of crime prevention or prosecution or large cultural shifts or cult deprogramming.

Show me your budget and I'll show you what you care about most. In most of the world, women and girls aren't high up on that list.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:35 AM on April 27, 2017 [12 favorites]

“I felt so damaged that indeed I saw the public as the enemy. I did what a good engineer does."

Hahaha oh lord...
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:47 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Less glibly:

I notice that whenever some successful (invariably almost always) white man has been revealed to have done something or said something horrible, there will always be a compulsion from a lot of people to wonder what led them to this behavior. The thing that this assumes is that, contrary to all evidence, it is the exception, rather than the norm, that successful white men do and say horrible things. This is pretty puzzling to me, but doesn't really surprise me anymore.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:02 AM on April 27, 2017 [18 favorites]

... I did what a good engineer does."

When I went back and re-read the Daily Beast piece, I realized that I can't find evidence that Mr. "Chicks can't dig my heavy convos about Special Relativity" ever made it beyond High School.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:40 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Update from WMUR:

"Gov. Chris Sununu on Wednesday told WMUR that the resignation of state Rep. Robert Fisher "is certainly in order" following a report on the online website The Daily Beast that the two-term lawmaker was involved in the creation of a misogynistic message board and made disparaging and derogatory comments about women.

"Representative Fisher's comments are horrendous and repulsive and his resignation is certainly in order," Sununu said in a statement emailed to WMUR by his office. He was referring to posts attributed to Fisher on the "Red Pill" message board on Reddit.com by The Daily Beast.

Sununu joined House Speaker Shawn Jasper in saying that Fisher's resignation would be appropriate (see our report below).

...

But Rep. Robert Fisher, R-Laconia, said that many of the posts attributed to him in a story published on The Daily Beast website are untrue or taken out of context. Those, he said, include a post on a 2008 message board post, in which he allegedly wrote: “I'm going to say it. Rape isn't an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot. I think he'd say it's quite good, really.”

Fisher, in a statement provided to WMUR, called it a “gross misquote.”

“Of course rape is a horrible crime,” Fisher said. “That was an out-of-context quote from a nearly decade-old debate about the failings of moral relativism. This kind of journalistic malpractice does a disservice not only to me, but to the women and men who are victimized, by perpetuating a false notion that the government doesn't care what happens to them. This discourages them from coming forward, which emboldens perpetrators to harm others.”

...

Fisher told WMUR in a brief telephone call, however, that he has no intention of resigning. He declined to discuss The Daily Beast story, preferring to communicate by email.

In his email, the lawmaker wrote: “Here's my message to the public: I am not disappearing. I will continue to stand strong for men's rights and the rights of all, and I intend on introducing new legislation in 2018 to push back in the New Hampshire courts and finally bring relief for New Hampshire parents and citizens who face these very real but under-reported issues.”

You should go read the whole article, Fisher's response is a TIRE FIRE, dude needs a crisis PR firm stat. (And further down the article, the state GOP leadership is also calling for his resignation and expressing their disgust with him.)

Laconia Daily Sun, his hometown paper; looks like a lot of rehash of wire reports but worth a glance.

Boston Globe, pretty similar to Daily Beast and WMUR.

Concord Monitor statehouse bureau; "Fisher, a second-term representative, did not return a Monitor call for comment. In a written statement he distributed to media outlets, Fisher, 31, did not outright deny he was behind the forum."

New Hampshire Coalition against Domestic Violence, and their Twitter which has had a lot to say.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:02 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

So, sounds like he has reversed his original, "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove anything" response?

What a fucking maroon.

I was just remarking to husband last night that probably my most fervent fantasy right now is going on an epic road trip and just driving around the country and finding people like this (at the time I was specifically referring to Paul Ryan because also fuck that guy) and just sitting across from them, looking them in the eye, and asking, "So, tell me, what the fuck is wrong with you?!"
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:34 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

I mean, there's a tire fire and then there's an "even the New Hampshire GOP wants to disown you" tire fire. Jesus.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:48 AM on April 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

"I mean, there's a tire fire and then there's an "even the New Hampshire GOP wants to disown you" tire fire. Jesus."

Right? I'm not sure if my favorite part of the statement is where he tosses off "fighting for equal rights for men" like that's a TOTALLY NORMAL thing for a politician to say and how he clearly still doesn't understand the problem* or if it's where he says "those who know me can read for themselves and judge if that sounds like something I believe." and literally everyone who works with him in the statehouse who has spoken to the press is on the record saying, "Yeah, dude, that sounds exactly like you, please resign."

*but yeah, this is obviously a man who's been drinking from the firehose of his own bullshit and is so far up his own rabbit hole he's completely lost touch with reality. Because he's doubling down on the idea that "equal rights for men" is the problem AND he thinks his constituents will respond so well this idea that he's using it as a defense in a crisis! He literally thinks it's commonplace political pablum that you mindlessly offer when you're in trouble because everyone will agree with it. Usually red-pill types recognize their ideas are unacceptable to the wider culture; it takes a special kind of stupid to think those ideas are so accepted that you can use them as a crisis defense to get Joe and Jane Average Voter on your side!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:29 PM on April 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

Well, the current political climate as a whole has revealed that not only is it not gross to air one's horrible prejudices in public discourse, but that it can actually get you elected to high office while hordes of people cheer you on. So it probably isn't completely insane of him to think he too can ride that wave to political success.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:53 PM on April 27, 2017 [11 favorites]

Well, the current political climate as a whole has revealed that not only is it not gross to air one's horrible prejudices in public discourse, but that it can actually get you elected to high office while hordes of people cheer you on.

Don't mind me, I'll be over here sobbing for America.
posted by corb at 12:59 PM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

As a lifelong American, I am mildly surprised when people think there were times when this wasn't much of America's natural state.
posted by delfin at 1:22 PM on April 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Don't mind me, I'll be over here sobbing for America.

When something like this comes out, nothing here has happened sui generis. It's not evidence of his the country is, but rather evidence of how the country is and how it turns out to have long been.

The only vaguely comforting, spiteful rider is that plenty of other nations are just as bad or worse. We have met the enemy and he is us.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:42 PM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

The only vaguely comforting, spiteful rider is that plenty of other nations are just as bad or worse.

Saudi Arabia Elected to U.N. Commission on the Status of Women
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:47 PM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

New Hampshire Coalition against Domestic Violence, and their Twitter which has had a lot to say.

"Chilling report from @CDCgov shows that #NH has some of the highest rates of sexual assault in the US"

"The State of #NH is also among only a handful of states that appropriates NO funding for sexual assault services or prevention efforts"
posted by twist my arm at 1:58 PM on April 27, 2017 [11 favorites]

I'd love for some journalists to pester him about the "out of context" nature of his quote, "Rape isn't an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot."

Does he mean that theft isn't an absolute bad because the thief prefers stealing to working? Or that drunk driving isn't an absolute bad because the driver wouldn't want to give it up? Or that 9-11 wasn't an absolute bad because Al-Qaeda liked the results?

I really want him hammered with, "so... which other crimes do you think aren't all bad because the criminals enjoy committing them?"
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:14 PM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

"I'd love for some journalists to pester him about the "out of context" nature of his quote, "Rape isn't an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot." "

He says in one of the articles that it was during a philosophical debate about why moral relativism sucks. So, I'm not sure he actually knows what moral relativism is, but I am relatively fluent in douchebro pretend-philosophy and it is POSSIBLE he was using the worst possible example to illustrate some of the boundary problems with utilitarianism or hedonism or one of the philosophical systems that judges morality based on beneficial outcomes, including personal enjoyment (rather than a deontological system) and said something like, "This is why consequentialist systems make a mockery of the Western intellectual tradition! I mean, if someone enjoys a bad action, it has at least a little moral merit? I mean, then you could say, Rape isn't an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot! That's ridiculous!"

But, like, explaining away ONE of your terrible quotes as someone taking a philosophy debate out of context doesn't change the fact that a) you still created the red pill universe and are a terrible person and b) used rape in joking and dismissive way to make a theoretical point, which is only slightly less-bad than saying that sincerely, and c) have approximately one billion quotes left to explain.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:28 PM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

The longer quote doesn't seem to be saying, "let me give you an example of how relativism doesn't work."

“I’m going to say it — Rape isn’t an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot. I think he’d say it’s quite good, really”

It's supposed to be from a reddit forum post in 2008; I'd love to see the original context, but that seems to be missing. (It's possible that's the whole context and it's a comment in the middle of a long thread.)

However, someone did nicely collect a set of quotes , which shows that... no, he pretty much believes that, since some men like rape, it's not totally a bad thing.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 6:52 PM on April 27, 2017

Oh, I think he TOTALLY believes what he said. It's just possible that out of his 1 billion horrible quotes, one of them was actually taken out of context and is ever so slightly less awful in context.

It's probably not, though, or he'd have provided the context. Instead of going on a frantic deleting spree to get rid of the comments and context.

Kind-of curious if the "bad break-up" ex comes out of the woodwork next to be like, "Yeah, in fact I did dump him with no warning; I dropped him like a hot potato because he did [horrible thing], and then he spent two years sobbing on my voicemail begging me to get back together with him while also sending 60 pizzas at a time to my house, he's not allowed to order pizza in New Hampshire anymore," and then every pizza parlor in New Hampshire is like, "It's true, we have all his phone numbers on a blacklist."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:06 PM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

TRP (the subreddit) has had members advocate rape as a legitimate sexual strategy with relative frequency. They like to claim that oh, no, of course the philosophy doesn't condone such things, but then you read the conversation and you'll see people talking about how it's a fine idea. It isn't a stretch to think that the creator of this group would also have some things to say about rape's positive qualities.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:11 PM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

From a 2013 cache of his reddit user page: Understand that in the old days, women were not brought up the way they are today. Before feminism, there was less freedom, and therefore it was not necessary to teach women consequence. Consequence was strictly a mans game.

OMG you guys I was born TOO LATE
Somebody get me a time machine so I can live without consequences

_{seriously though don't make my mistake and click that link. I haven't found that rape quote but I'm sure its original context just makes it even worse.}
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 7:14 PM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

Consequence was strictly a mans game.

thanks title 9 now consequence a womans game too.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:30 PM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

From Fish, fish's link, this is my favorite given the circumstances:

I dont think we can grow if we ever go private. It goes without saying, you should invest in a decent throwaway that cannot be traced back to you.
posted by gladly at 7:36 PM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Women today lack the discipline for marriage.

Ha ha, remind me why women lack the discipline to perpetuate the institution that was designed to curtail their personal freedom for the fulfillment of men in the first place... ?

I find these idiots' obsession with the hypothetical marriage that they're owed more disgusting than any other part of their worldview. They don't just expect women to fuck them (the idea is almost whimsical in comparison!), they expect them to exist for them. They expect us to want to be married to them?? Why would we ever want that, unless there were laws and social prejudices preventing us from making our own living?

The idea that you might need to be pleasant company to a woman is a foreign fucking mystery to them because their personalities are self-centered and odious. How often do you hear unpleasant women diagnosed with narcissism and borderline personality disorder, but then we pretend like these men are just a consequence of bad mothering and a failing economy. Good lord!

Anyway who gives a shit about these men. I'm tired of these "ignore them at your peril!!" type warnings, there is officially nothing individual women can do about it besides continue to avoid the ones who seem the most physically dangerous, and foment to create laws and norms that protect us.
posted by stoneandstar at 5:24 PM on April 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

Okay his hometown paper just published his statement in full and YOU GUYS IT IS INSANE. Also (on WMUR) the GOP speaker of the NH House explained the process by which a member of the house might go about making a motion to have him investigated and expelled. And said he wasn't saying anyone should do that, he was just explaining HOW to do it if someone maybe wanted to.

Anyway, choice quotes from the world's most mature man [comments from me in square brackets]:

"I'm going to say it. Rape isn't an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot. I think he'd say it's quite good, really." ... What was the context of that statement?
It was a debate about absolute truth that was recurring on my forums back in '08. The default position for most on the aptly dubbed "gripe corner" was devil's advocate, which made for lively debate. (Unrelated bits removed for brevity, but you can read the full source here: https://archive.is/zqvin) [note: link does not work, but he quotes the exchange and my guesses about douchebro fake philosophy are pretty correct and it's not appreciably less-bad in context]
[...]
A lot of people have called for my head without an ounce of comprehension of the context of this quote, including Speaker Jasper, but that's okay. I don't blame them. I blame the failing school system.
[...]
"He blasted women for their 'sub-par intelligence.' He said that women's personalities are "lackluster and boring, serving little purpose in day to day life.'" [says he has a smart mom and smart sisters, blah blah blah] Sure, my experience would eventually lead me to discover that all is not lost in the bleak world of dating, as I'm in a very happy relationship today. But my god did it suck when I realized just how high of a bar my family set for my expectations, with no preparation for the eventual realization that most people won't be what you expect.
[...]
I never taped a sexual encounter, though I have often considered that it may be the best, or only, form of protection for men to prevent false rape accusations. I assume there's a legal way to do it with proper notices and consent forms, but I never got around to researching it. Obviously my fear of the rate of false accusations was fresh in my memory, as I had lived through the nightmare once before.

I can't get over how he thinks that this is HELPING with anything, how he takes such an angry and combative tone, how he directly attacks his own party's leadership, how the smirking self-righteous name-calling strategy of two-bit college frat boys caught in bad behavior is his choice of strategy. I mean I understand the form of stupid but seeing it in such clear, public action is just making me shake my head in wonder.

(Also it's SUPER RICH for a guy who spent four days preparing a public written response attempting to save his career that would be reprinted nationally and came up with THIS clearly unedited hot mess of an offense against fluent English to accuse anybody else of having been let down by the school system. The Reynolds Pamphlet this is not.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:58 PM on April 28, 2017 [11 favorites]

I just read that statement, and it is even more whiny, passive-aggressive, and "I'm sorry you feel that way" than I expected. Also, can I just flag

I never taped a sexual encounter, though I have often considered that it may be the best, or only, form of protection for men to prevent false rape accusations. I assume there's a legal way to do it with proper notices and consent forms, but I never got around to researching it. Obviously my fear of the rate of false accusations was fresh in my memory, as I had lived through the nightmare once before.

So he's been accused of rape? Did I miss that in the original Daily Beast article? Or did he just inadvertently admit that?

Considering the current political situation, no amount of misogyny should surprise me. The possibility that a rapist holds elected office should not surprise me. And yet the horror seems bottomless.
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 9:30 PM on April 28, 2017 [12 favorites]

So he's been accused of rape? Did I miss that in the original Daily Beast article? Or did he just inadvertently admit that?

That was my takeaway too, which is even creepier given his "thought experiments" saying the rapist sure enjoys it!
posted by corb at 11:01 PM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Okay his hometown paper just published his statement in full and YOU GUYS IT IS INSANE.

As a mental exercise, contrast this statement with how the President responded to the Access Hollywood tape. That perhaps didn’t work that well, but it worked well enough. This, hopefully, will not.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:59 AM on April 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

So he's been accused of rape? Did I miss that in the original Daily Beast article? Or did he just inadvertently admit that?

He claims that his bad-breakup-ex (totally unverifiably, of course) threatened to accuse him of rape during their bad breakup. But then she didn't. So.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:17 AM on April 29, 2017 [4 favorites]

Fisher has resigned.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:16 PM on May 17, 2017 [10 favorites]

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