This isn’t even about comedy…. This is about the internet.

December 2, 2012 9:20 PM

"It’s really simple. I just want as many guys as possible who have an opinion about how they see women treated in culture whether it’s an observation about the news or speaking up about how they feel when their wife comes home and tells him about an instance of gender discrimination." - Comedian Jen Kirkman on why she started MA'AM: Men Against Assholes & Misogyny.
posted by mokin (49 comments total)

See also: Jay Smooth smoothly being Jay in All These Sexist Gamer Dudes Are Some Shook Ones.
posted by Panjandrum at 9:30 PM on December 2, 2012 [5 favorites]

Comedian Jen Kirkman on why she started MA'AM: Men Against Assholes & Misogyny.

Tumblr comedienne or not, I can't help but thinking I'd take this more seriously if it had been started up by a male.
posted by Mezentian at 9:36 PM on December 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

The internet takes everything more seriously if it's started up by a male, though, so that doesn't make this much different.
posted by NoraReed at 9:45 PM on December 2, 2012 [49 favorites]

I'm all for the cause, and perhaps it's just me, but that sentence is really not simple. I can't actually understand what she's trying to say. She wants as many guys as possible to... what, exactly?
posted by twirlypen at 9:53 PM on December 2, 2012 [11 favorites]

"Tumblr comedienne or not, I can't help but thinking I'd take this more seriously if it had been started up by a male."

I disagree. That would be mansplaining, basically.

The only problem with this project is that Jen Kirkman is kind of horrible in her own unique way. Nice idea though.
posted by bardic at 9:54 PM on December 2, 2012

I read it as "I just want as many guys as possible who have an opinion about how they see women treated in culture [to write things for me to post to this here blog,] whether it’s..."
posted by cosmologinaut at 9:57 PM on December 2, 2012

Yeah, I suspect you're right, but it's an awkward way to phrase it.

But! I don't want to derail this. It's definitely a good idea - feminism is still seen by many as purely a women's issue, so the more men who speak up about being feminist, the better.
posted by twirlypen at 10:03 PM on December 2, 2012

I think the reason that sentence is so hard to parse isn't just because it's missing commas...but because it's not a sentence.

That having been said, her motives seem cool and I hope her project helps some people and doesn't just become another place for white knights to misguidedly post long screeds that sort of simultaneously show support for and yet undermine women (who are very capable of explaining things for themselves).
posted by trackofalljades at 10:13 PM on December 2, 2012

Except I can't hear the name of this organization without thinking of "Married With Children's" humorlessly anti-feminist organization that Al Bundy founded named "NO MA'AM", the "National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood".

When you're getting too close to "Married With Children", you may be hurting your cause.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:15 PM on December 2, 2012 [10 favorites]

bardic: "The only problem with this project is that Jen Kirkman is kind of horrible in her own unique way."

Citation please?
posted by Apropos of Something at 10:29 PM on December 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

I disagree. That would be mansplaining, basically.

I'm not even sure what this beast "mansplaining" is, although I am probably guilty of it, but that's not the issue.

If I parse it correctly, she wants men to write about how they are standing up against misogyny and put it on a tumblr, where dudes who are all "This Is Just So Wrong" will write about it so other men (and the odd woman who surfs on in) can all nod and go "Right On, Sisters, and Sister-Allies! Preach it".

And nothing changes, except apparently everyone can oggle boobs, as posted by odinsdream.

Maybe I'm cynical and defeated, and maybe an avalanche does start with a single badly-worded pebble, and maybe this is it, but I suspect it's little more than one flicker in the darkness and a chance for this Jen Kirkman to get her name out there and/or do some good.

And maybe "so many women and girls are not always surrounded by guys this great or guys who say anything - and so they don’t know", but that would be another sad indictment on the world.

OTOH, scrolling back through her Tumblr I found this Tina Fey gif.
posted by Mezentian at 10:33 PM on December 2, 2012

odinsdream: "Some really badly-thought-out ads are on the hyperlinks in the first article. Screenshot."

I think there may have been some bugs or something in the original setup. I wrote a piece for the blog (the first one posted, actually), and it had a few bad ads at first, but now appears fine. Full disclosure, I've got a bunch of friends posting these as well.

I think the concern about being mansplaining guy is valid, and certainly one I'd have before I'd start something like this. Responding to an actual lady's call to write a thing seemed a nice compromise. Also, under the circumstances, I think it's kinda shitty to question Jen's motives. From what I can tell, she had a couple really shitty exchanges on Twitter with some real sexist assholes and is upset, legitimately. To imagine that starting a contributor-based Tumblr is a path towards comedy stardom is a little ridiculous.

My attempt to avoid the mansplaining was to try to be articulate about sexism has hurt me, not because that hurt's somehow more or as important than the hurt brought on women, but because it's a voice in the conversation. I thought Paul Gilmartin's piece was similarly themed: here's the reason why I turned out to be a sexist and, if this reason applies to you, you should think about going to get some help. Not as an excuse, but because we're all better when we're all better.
posted by Apropos of Something at 10:41 PM on December 2, 2012 [5 favorites]

"Citation please?"

I stopped following her on twitter because it was becoming one gigantic screed about. . . something. I'm not sure what.
posted by bardic at 12:06 AM on December 3, 2012

What if I still want to be an asshole but not a Misogynist? Is there no middle ground?
posted by greenhornet at 12:11 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

The idea for the blog is that Jen Kirkman would post something and would get many hateful replies. And invariably many of her comedian dude friends would DM her ore-mail her to say how shitty the responses were and how bad they feel. And she just wanted someof that energy to go toward something tha would appear in public instead of in private mesages to her.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:37 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

Not seeing a particular problem with parsing the sentence, myself. Maybe it should be "tells them", not "tells him", but that's pretty picky.
posted by Segundus at 2:18 AM on December 3, 2012

What if I still want to be an asshole but not a Misogynist?

Have you considered trolling misogynists? Thin skins, dim wits, easy targets. You'll still be an asshole, but if you absolutely have to be an asshole you might as well do it by attracting the attention of jerks toward you and away from innocent bystanders.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:57 AM on December 3, 2012 [14 favorites]

Have you considered trolling misogynists?

Someone forgot the first rule about The Most Fun You Can Have On The Internet Club
posted by fullerine at 3:03 AM on December 3, 2012

The timing of this is really interesting, as it's right on the heels of an extensive post dealing with privilege-checking and callouts, and I think a lot of the behaviour discussed is likely to appear in this thread.

I suspect it's little more than one flicker in the darkness and a chance for this Jen Kirkman to get her name out there and/or do some good.

I don't know anything about Jen Kirkman, so I don't think i could accurately say anything about her motives - but isn't anything that's posted on the internet under an identifiable name "self-promoting" in a way? That doesn't mean it's all on the level of SEO-marketing, more an acknowledgement that no-one's motives are totally pure, nor do they have to be for positive change to occur.
posted by dubold at 3:30 AM on December 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't care what her motives are. I do care that initiatives like this are happening.
It's a bit like the EverydaySexism project. (Please forgive a minor derail into spaces like this on the internet.)

It is fascinating to me and a large number of other women who had started to "tune out" educated males telling us that feminism is no longer necessary. (I say that because I flat-out don't put myself in the position anymore of getting within 5 km of that discussion with people who are just trolling from a position of ignorance)

The surprise comments from some men along the lines of "I can't believe that is still happening, I can't believe he said that to you, you HAVE to go to HR .....etc.," "I'm embarrassed and horrified this happend to you" lead me to believe that at a certain stage we became so tired of being angry that we started being nice. The fact that men privately contacted her to say these things is useful as an indicator that there is a group like this already out there.

We (some of us) stopped routinely updating our nearest and dearest on the casual misogeny we face on a daily basis. Like most people we want to have a nice peaceful life and to enjoy our downtime and shit like this pollutes it.

So it is important to me that there is a space to post when it happens and where I can keep it a certain distance from the place I rest. The space I recuperate. The relationships that nourish me.

I value seeing men tell me how appalled and horrified they are that it still happening and participate in a project like this which can only raise awareness. I also value the fact that it is a beacon for women-haters, really draws them out, they post their bile in places like Metafilter, Shakesville & Jezebel so that educated males can't dismiss it as "Youtube Comment box rhetoric, LOL"
posted by Wilder at 5:04 AM on December 3, 2012 [13 favorites]

FWIW, I think this strikes a good tone. Really it's about being against assholes. Every right-thinking person is against assholes. I've never seen these issues as women's issues. I've always seen them as human issues. I think it would be ok if they were women's issues... I just don't think that's the best way to think about them...though it's somewhat complicated. Anyway. If somebody is being an asshole to somebody else, I think it is, to some extent and in at least many cases, everybody's business. Why anyone would care who's got what kind of genitals in such a case...I've just never been able to get my head around that. (Which is not to say that there aren't some interesting generalizations that can be made on roughly that basis.)

It'd be interesting some time--but not now I reckon--to have a discussion about the phenomenon Wilder mentions above. I'm an educated male who now tunes out feminism. Not because I think that there's no more misogyny nor any such thing, but because I think that too many of the things that self-described feminists say to and about these issues and about males like are not true. So more or less we have a situation in which well-educated and well-meaning people are tuning each other out with respect to a fairly important set of issues. That seems bad.

But this stuff in the OP...this way of thinking about the issues seems pretty much right to me. The problem is largely, assholes. This is not playing the game (to reference the recent "liberal bullying" post) wherein secret, unverifiable politically incorrect motives are attributed to those who dissent from the orthodoxy... It's talking frankly about the real problem. It's just encouraging people to talk about the assholery of assholes. Personally, I'd rather hear people of both sexes speak out in a straightforward and non-theory-packed way about this stuff. But I do understand why it might be useful to emphasize guys doing it, as a way of breaking the grip of the view that these are "women's issues."
posted by Fists O'Fury at 5:46 AM on December 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I stopped following her on twitter because it was becoming one gigantic screed about. . . something. I'm not sure what.
posted by bardic at 3:06 AM

Me TOO! Her twitter feed was all like...this and that, and I was like "I can't deal with this horrible something anymore!" I was so over it.
posted by orme at 5:49 AM on December 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

bardic - I disagree. That would be mansplaining, basically.

(For context: I'm male)

I hope you'll forgive what's probably a stupid question, but... why? The limited understanding of "mansplaining" that I've gleaned, mostly from MeFi, is that it's generally used to describe situations where men are telling women what they ought to think (/say/feel/perceive/etc...), and/or drowning out women's voices in the conversation.* Either of these is, I agree, a continuation of the original problem as well as being simply rude.

However, feminist men are also exhorted to speak up when we see shitty behaviour, to call each other out, and to discuss how we can help. We're often told that feminism is everyone's problem, and that it's kind of shitty when all the hard work of ending oppression is left entirely to the oppressed. So men should help where we can. It's tricky to do this without (possibly valid) accusations of mansplaining if it's done in a mostly-female space, so the remaining options for men are either to shut up and never talk about sexism, or to establish spaces where men can talk about this stuff without interrupting women's conversations.

This kind of blog -- regardless of who started it -- seems like a good example of the latter. There's no pre-existing community or on-going conversation there to be disrupted or drowned out, and I can't see a way in which the gender of the site owner would make a difference to whether a given blog post was trying to tell women what to think.

Have I misunderstood or missed something here?

*I get the strong impression that "mansplaining" is one of those troublesome words which has different meanings to different people, and about which people often have strong feelings. So please accept my apologies if I've misunderstood you here.
posted by metaBugs at 6:26 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

bardic: "I stopped following her on twitter because it was becoming one gigantic screed about. . . something. I'm not sure what."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. "I don't like her Twitter feed" is a pretty big step down from "kind of horrible." Horrible's a word with some pretty cutting connotations, especially when compared directly with sexism, especially compared directly with the kind of Twitter sexism where Jen Kirkman is tired of people at-replying her things like "She's dumb, but I'd fuck her."

There's plenty of lovely people I don't follow on Twitter because I'm not interested in what they have to say there, Jen Kirkman included. No judgment should be implied about their character (or mine) from that choice.
posted by Apropos of Something at 6:34 AM on December 3, 2012 [5 favorites]

There is a risk of this place (a place where men talk about what sexism and misogyny are and reflect on the sexism and misogyny they think they see) becoming another place where men explain away, diminish, or qualify as not-so-bad and shouldn't-you-fee-complemented? dehumanizing treatment that women experience every day, whether small or significant treatment. That's an inherent risk of this venture and that's among the reasons, I'm NOT terribly interested in reading it.

That said, it really is important for men to talk to other men in their private manly spaces in a way that removes the power, appeal, and acceptability of sexism from the context of being men in the world. It's also important for men to talk to men in public spaces in the same way.

It's really hard to articulate. It's not that women need men to legitimize the idea that sexism and misogyny are dehumanizing and bad. But men need to internalize it and make it acceptable among themselves to think that (for instance) GoDaddy ads are inexcusable in the modern world, no matter how honestly attractive the women they use are.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:03 AM on December 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I will stick with renewing my membership in the League of Women Voters, which was founded by women, named a "League of Women", still accepts men as members, and actually does useful work towards battling misogyny..
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:35 AM on December 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Whenever I say something anti-sexist publicly (as these men are) I'm concerned that I might be engaging in "white-knighting". Is the line between good and bad behavior in this respect as thin as I fear that it is, or should I just not sweat it?
posted by dfan at 8:00 AM on December 3, 2012

dfan: "Is the line between good and bad behavior in this respect as thin as I fear that it is, or should I just not sweat it?"

There are some people who will accuse you of white-knighting when you stand up in support of minorities. There are other people who will accuse you of contributing to oppression through your silence if you don't. You are going to offend people who you agree with, either way, but not the same people. You just need to think about who you are willing to annoy, and who you don't wish to annoy, and how much you want to speak out, and how much you'd rather stay silent. There's no way, as a person with any kind of privilege (male, heterosexual, cis, having legs, having sight, etc.etc.etc.) to act that doesn't annoy someone whose general principles you agree with. Just accept that, and decide based on the idea that, "yeah, sure, I'm going to annoy someone on my side, but that's going to happen either way, so what do I think would be the best thing to do?"
posted by Bugbread at 8:10 AM on December 3, 2012 [7 favorites]

dfan: I don't know that the line is thin as much as it is really poorly-defined. I see the line as when men are recognizing, defining, and confronting actions of their own or their male peers as misogynist, sexist or oppressive, they are on the side of the line that is helpful and working toward de-legitimizing those behaviors. When men are quantifying the experiences of the women they know or the women they encounter as misogynist, sexist or oppressive, they are on the side of the line that is UNhelpful and mansplaining or White Knighting. I don't know if anyone else in the world sees that as the line.

Men (or people, really) should think about their behavior affects others, but they can't really say whether or not the affect is legitimate, real or "not a problem" because they did not "mean it that way".

When men talk about the experiences the women in their lives have with sexist behavior, one of the risks is framing those experiences from the perspective of the sexist, even if they are condemning the behavior, and doing so has a tendency to forgive the behavior when it should not be forgiven, even if we can understand it or have empathy for a person who did not intend to be sexist.
posted by crush-onastick at 8:21 AM on December 3, 2012

Listen as long as Universities teach Freshmen at Orientation"How to avoid getting Raped" as opposed to "Just don't rape", we need as many spaces and conversations as possible.
posted by Wilder at 8:22 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

Kicking their asses gone out of style, or am I still good there?
posted by Smedleyman at 8:40 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

If somebody is being an asshole to somebody else, I think it is, to some extent and in at least many cases, everybody's business. Why anyone would care who's got what kind of genitals in such a case...I've just never been able to get my head around that.

I want to take this at face value, but I have to admit that your confusion doesn't seem like a possible outcome of having earnestly considered any feminist positions, whether or not you agreed with them. Misogyny is a social pathology; effective treatment of any pathology usually involves taking its causes into account; in the case of misogyny those causes are gendered, which implies that any solution to the problem is likely to be gendered too. Even if you disagree with any of the assertions in that chain, there's nothing difficult about entertaining the logic there, and it can't be novel if there was ever a time in your life when you didn't "tune out" feminism. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but otherwise I can't see any defensible path towards a lack of comprehension on this point given any familiarity with the discussion around it.

I'm an educated male who now tunes out feminism. Not because I think that there's no more misogyny nor any such thing, but because I think that too many of the things that self-described feminists say to and about these issues and about males like are not true.

Such as? Without particulars this reads as "I am willing to ignore an entire school of thought," which isn't the sort of thing that you can expect any reasonable interlocutor to just affably accept.
posted by invitapriore at 8:53 AM on December 3, 2012

Am I being too much of a grammar Nazi if I want sentences like that to have a subject, object and verb?
posted by brenton at 8:57 AM on December 3, 2012

Bugbread: There are some people who will accuse you of white-knighting when you stand up in support of minorities. There are other people who will accuse you of contributing to oppression through your silence if you don't. You are going to offend people who you agree with, either way, but not the same people. You just need to think about who you are willing to annoy, and who you don't wish to annoy, and how much you want to speak out, and how much you'd rather stay silent.

There are some online communities that I've largely given up on because of the obsession with theoretical pissing matches and posting-history "gotcha." Tumblr is one of those places with well-intentioned people going GRAR over things that I find absolutely baffling at times.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:05 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

I too have to admit I found a disconnect in Fists O Fury's comment suggesting he tunes feminists out when the issues they describe happened to them bear no relationship to the way he behaves. (I hope I got that right).


But it seems to me that this MA'AM space and the blogs I've read there are talking about men who care that women have an OK time, especially online. They care that their colleagues, sisters, lovers, friends, are not exposed to unnecessary and disturbing experience just because they were born female. The fact that they personally wouldn't remotely behave in that way is not used by these men as a reason for not taking action

so the disconnect I see in both our "tuning out"s (if that's a thing) is in caring too much or caring too little. I'm a self-described feminist if that helps.
posted by Wilder at 9:12 AM on December 3, 2012

I'm pretty sure the subject there is "I," the verb is "want," and the object is "guys," so you should be good.
posted by clavicle at 9:28 AM on December 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

When I read the post, I thought this was going to be a project encouraging guys to speak up "about how they feel when their [wife / daughter / girlfriend / sister / mother / friend / female co-worker] tells him about an instance of gender discrimination" when they're talking to other men. Yeah, we need to be doing that. And doing that can make it a little easier for other guys talk about the same thing. This is the kind of thing that pushes the conversation about gender in our culture a little bit more in the direction of thinking about how gender inequality and discrimination affect people, and affect people we know. It's especially important for men who don't live and work in a liberal bubble to be trying to talk about this.

But as it turns out, Kirkman is just trying to get guys to send her stuff to post on a feminist blog that consists entirely of guest posts by men. Almost all of the content consists of guys patting themselves on the back about how great they are because they're anti-sexist and hate misogyny. That's great, but I'm not sure how sending Kirkman self-congratulatory blog posts submissions accomplishes anything.
posted by nangar at 9:29 AM on December 3, 2012

All this pearl clutching about "man-splaining" and feminist manifesto and white knighting...it's really very simple. If you wouldn't say it in front of your mother, then don't say it to or about women.
posted by Kokopuff at 9:45 AM on December 3, 2012

Kokopuff: “All this pearl clutching about ‘man-splaining’ and feminist manifesto and white knighting...it's really very simple. If you wouldn't say it in front of your mother, then don't say it to or about women.”

How many mothers have you met, exactly?
posted by koeselitz at 10:06 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

I mean: mothers don't seem like a very good standard, because there are a hell of a lot of them, and they like different things. My mother hates abortionists, gays, and Barack Obama. There are things I wouldn't tell her that I don't think are very objectionable. There has to be another standard, doesn't there?
posted by koeselitz at 10:08 AM on December 3, 2012

The "If you wouldn't say it in front of your mother, then don't say it to or about women" standard is sort of "white knighting", isn't it? Because it's sanctifying all women based on some mythologizing of their having given birth.

The non-white-knighting standard is "Will you embarrassed if someone whose opinion of you matters hears that this is how you treat other people based on their gender?"
posted by crush-onastick at 10:17 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

Fists O'Fury: “FWIW, I think this strikes a good tone. Really it's about being against assholes. Every right-thinking person is against assholes. I've never seen these issues as women's issues. I've always seen them as human issues. I think it would be ok if they were women's issues... I just don't think that's the best way to think about them...though it's somewhat complicated. Anyway. If somebody is being an asshole to somebody else, I think it is, to some extent and in at least many cases, everybody's business. Why anyone would care who's got what kind of genitals in such a case...I've just never been able to get my head around that.”

I don't think you're aware of it, but by phrasing it this way you're assuming that sexism is not a thing that exists in society.

Think about how it works when we talk about racism. A brown person can feel as though they're being victimized because of their race when they're called a nasty slur; or it can be something more subtle. I've been to restaurants in Arizona where all the brown people were seated in the back and the white people were seated in the front by the windows. Now – how do we talk about that? You could respond in the same way you did in this case by saying: "this isn't a race problem, it's an asshole problem; you could say it's a race problem, but we shouldn't see everything in terms of race. Why would anyone care what color a person's skin is?"

But somebody did care. That the point. That's what racism means: that in this situation this kind of assholery is experienced uniquely by brown people. To deny that race is a component is to completely ignore the experience brown people are having when they suddenly realize they're being treated differently, that they specifically are being targeted out of all people simply because of the color of their skin.

So – yeah, what we're talking about here are women's issues. They are specifically women's issues because they are only experienced by women. We're talking about misogyny. When a guy pulls the gaslighting routine on the women he knows but not the men, that is misogyny. You can disagree in specific cases – you can argue about whether this guy or that guy is actually a misogynist or just a run-of-the-mill asshole. But since "misogyny" is by definition specifically a women's issue, denying that these are "women's issues" means denying that there's any misogyny here (or perhaps anywhere in society) at all.

And we can have that discussion – I am not sure we need to, though. Do you believe misogynist sexism is a problem in society today? That's the question, really.

“It'd be interesting some time--but not now I reckon--to have a discussion about the phenomenon Wilder mentions above. I'm an educated male who now tunes out feminism. Not because I think that there's no more misogyny nor any such thing, but because I think that too many of the things that self-described feminists say to and about these issues and about males like are not true. So more or less we have a situation in which well-educated and well-meaning people are tuning each other out with respect to a fairly important set of issues. That seems bad.”

As a man who is a feminist, and who knows a lot of men and women who hate feminism, I have some ideas about what you mean, but I'm not certain. Like invitapriore, I'm curious what things self-described feminists say about these issues and about males (like myself) that are wrong.
posted by koeselitz at 10:31 AM on December 3, 2012 [9 favorites]

"Tumblr comedienne or not"...

Um, way to diminish a woman who is a very accomplished, respected and funny *actual* comic. Don't use the diminutive for 'comedian'...ever. And adding "Tumblr" in front makes it sound like she's just some little lady with a blog who fancies herself funny.

"This would mean more if it came from a man" ? = part of the problem
posted by SassHat at 11:24 AM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

Don't use the diminutive for 'comedian'...ever.

'Comedienne' is not the diminutive, it is the feminine of 'comedian'.
posted by BigSky at 12:28 PM on December 3, 2012

Point taken, but calling a lady comic "comedienne" (unless she calls herself that) is the "stewardess" of performing. I don't even call female actors "actresses" any more because what does gender have to do with it in the first place?
posted by SassHat at 12:45 PM on December 3, 2012

'Comedienne' is not the diminutive, it is the feminine of 'comedian'.

Good point.

I'd also like to suggest the use of: doctoress, taxi driverienne, plumbress, and grammerienne.
posted by charlesminus at 1:03 PM on December 3, 2012 [6 favorites]

I don't even call female actors "actresses" any more because what does gender have to do with it in the first place?

Actresses can play female characters. Occupational terms for performers frequently distinguish gender, other ones usually don't.
posted by nangar at 3:12 PM on December 3, 2012

someone:Listen as long as Universities teach Freshmen at Orientation"How to avoid getting Raped" as opposed to "Just don't rape", we need as many spaces and conversations as possible.

someone else:If you wouldn't say it in front of your mother, then don't say it to or about women.

funnily enough, my (male) friend posted a link to the Freshman Orientation post on facebook, commenting that she had a good point. His mother responded by saying it's not like freshman guys probably rape anybody, and besides men get raped too.

In conclusion, mothers are probably a dumb standard.
posted by jacalata at 4:01 PM on December 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

Anonymous is going after Hunter Moore.

It seems part and parcel with opposition misogyny by speaking out for the women in their life who are still spoken to this way.

But (electronically) busting up on a guy like that, bit more visceral and direct.
(usual disclaimers on vigilantism. I'm more a meatspace guy anyway. Some people go through life shouting (metaphorically) "kill me!" doesn't mean you have to oblige them. Or turn them into Luca Brasi.)

Although I wonder at which is more efficacious. I mean the "mom as standard" has a Ms. Cleaver feel too it (albeit good advice I've always thought. Though my mom studied Garrote Larense and can wield a wicked rolling pin, so YMMV) but my instincts go for the ultraviolence or at very least a harsh word.
A great deal of the latter is reactive. I mean, I understand Moore headbutted some female dancer at a club, I'm A. curious how other guys didn't bust him up and B. how the gangster crew who owned the strip joint (oh, c'mon, are any of them legit businessmen?) didn't break his legs.
I would have gotten involved at the scene. But I wouldn't hunt him down for it now.

Anonymous, and web vigilantism seems to fall into this grey area, timing-wise.
Does the attention prop up the action more? Does the violence (or e-vigilantism) create more problems than whatever deterrent effect?
I don't know.
I always like the simplicity of Chandler: women and kids you protect. Louses, you take out.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:47 PM on December 4, 2012