The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Moby in the ‘Manosphere’?

Posted on | May 27, 2015 | 87 Comments

Before getting to the point — the possibility that liberal trolls pretending to be Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) are creating fake “hate” against women — permit me to clarify something: I am both a journalist and a conservative and do not think those two things are contradictory in any way. I was a full-time newspaper reporter, editor and columnist for nearly a decade before I became a conservative in the mid-1990s, and so my perspective on politics and media bias is somewhat different than many other conservatives.

All that is preamble to explaining my attitudes vis-a-vis the whole MRA movement and the so-called online “Manosphere.” You go to war with the army you have, as they say, and the current situation regarding feminism — which has become the “Sex Trouble” project — clearly requires an institutional base outside the currently existing ideological/political system. It would be foolish to expect, inter alia, the Heritage Foundation or National Review to get down in the trenches of the War of the Sexes as it is currently being fought. There are a handful of conservative journalists (including Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner and Cathy Young of the Daily Beast) who “get it” in terms of the mutant totalitarian strain of feminism that has erupted into public spasms of raging insanity the past couple of years. However, there is generally a shortage of attention being paid to this by conservative media, and so we must build something new and different.

There is an existing network of online popular opposition to feminism, but this presents its own problems. Whereas mainstream conservative organizations allied with the GOP tend to be wimpy and prone to run for the hills the first time someone calls them ugly names, the grassroots “Manosphere” is the exact opposite: A lot of pissed-off-and-fed-up people who feel like they’ve been fighting a guerrilla war against feminism for years and who have a predictable tendency to Say Things You Wouldn’t Want to See Quoted in the New York Times.

No big deal, really. Grassroots is grassroots, and you cannot expect “message discipline” from random people on the Internet. However, the Left (of which feminism is a subsidiary) loves to play the guilt-by-association game, so when the spotlight suddenly shines over there where you’ve been fighting your guerrilla war, you can predict that they will do their “links-and-ties” tactic to try to discredit you. Trust me, my friends, I’ve got the scars of old battles and many tales to tell you about how this game is played, but let’s get down to a practical example.

Aaron Clarey wrote an article at Return of Kings highly critical of the new movie Mad Max: Fury Road. Because I almost never go to movies, I don’t really care about this any more than I care about any other vile poison emerging from Hollywood. Was it scripted by Catharine MacKinnon based on a novel by Andrea Dworkin, directed by Sheila Jeffreys and produced by Anita Sarkeesian? I don’t know, but it’s apparently got the whole Tough Action-Hero Chick thing happening, which is very much a feminist-approved theme, and Return of Kings is not down with anything that feminists approve.

However, it is not Aaron’s opinion of this movie, but rather a comment someone left on his article that caught my attention because it caught the attention of a left-wing “male feminist” Whose Name Shall Not Be Written Here. The comment by “TS77RP1” reads thus:

The only way back is to begin punishing ambition in our daughters and in all female children. They need to be physically and psychologically disciplined to be servile and deferential and they unfortunately need to have it beaten into them that they should NEVER trust their own judgement and always seek guidance and permission of their male headships.
My daughter would be turned out with nothing but a shirt on her back if she so much as looked at a college website or played with her brother’s educational toys.
She would be belted to the point of being unable to sit if she exhibited confidence in decision making.
I don’t want my wife to step foot out of the house unless her every dime and minute spent can be accounted for and executed in conjuncture with my approval. My daughter will exude obedience and timidity for whoever her future husband is and it’s imperative that all Christian Men demand nothing less within their own homes. Playtime for feminazis and the left is over. This is our world and our heritage to protect. Let the cultural war begin!

Well, this is a horrifying thing to read, but is it authentic? I did a search for “TS77RP1” and this comment has apparently been deleted from Return of Kings and, furthermore, the only places on the Internet where that handle can be found are all quoting the left-wing “male feminist” Whose Name Shall Not Be Written Here.

If it walks like a moby and talks like a moby, it’s probably a moby, and if you don’t know what a moby is, you should learn.

moby
An insidious and specialized type of left-wing troll who visits blogs and impersonates a conservative for the purpose of either spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension among conservative voters, or who purposely posts inflammatory and offensive comments for the purpose of discrediting the blog in question.
The term is derived from the name of the liberal musician Moby, who famously suggested in February of 2004 that left-wing activists engage in this type of subterfuge: “For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?’”

Was the commenter “TS77RP1” such a troll? I strongly suspect it. Having seen firsthand the insidious deceptions that the online Left is willing to employ, this would be par for the course. This doesn’t rule out the possibility Dictator Dad is real, but I’m extremely skeptical.

Anyway, let this be a warning to the grassroots opposition to feminism: Keep your eyes open for similar dirty tricks.

Team Clinton is playing for keeps, you know.





 

Category: Feminism, Sex Trouble

Comments

87 Responses to “A Moby in the ‘Manosphere’?”

  1. Toads
    May 28th, 2015 @ 1:39 pm

    Just turn it around on them. Go to all sorts of websites (even ones that have nothing to do with ‘feminsim’), and just go around saying things that real ‘feminists’ have in fact said before, like ‘90% of the male gender needs to be exterminated’ or ‘there should be a new tax rate for men, with a tax exemption for women’.

    Do it. Since ‘feminists’ say these things already, they won’t protest, but more men will see the light.

  2. somercet
    May 28th, 2015 @ 2:11 pm

    Well said. I last saw this in Joss Whedon’s “Heart of Gold” Firefly episode, with the insane, public rapist/Jesus freak (white of course). I liked Firefly when it came out, but looking back it’s a steaming pile of Marx-Feminist entryism.

  3. Finrod Felagund
    May 28th, 2015 @ 2:14 pm

    He sounds like Mr. Garrison from the first few seasons of South Park.

  4. Lastango
    May 28th, 2015 @ 2:16 pm

    Another Moby-style I’ve noticed at RoK is the planting of wildly extremist, hate-style comments. These take the general form of “All (fill-in-the-blank) should be thrown in the oven”, and often call for death and other violence against feminists, Jews, gays, etc.

    As per your helpful definition of “Moby”, the goal is to provide fodder other progressives can point to in order to demonize RoK, or make it an object of ridicule. In tenor and content, these Alinskyite jabs bring to mind the neverending flow of faux hate crimes at Universities, perpetrated for the purpose of being subsequently exploited.

  5. Jeanette Victoria
    May 28th, 2015 @ 2:17 pm

    Leftist hate good parenting they especially hate good fathering. My ex wasn’t such a good husband be he shinned as a father. Born in 1935 and a former Green Beret there was nothing liberal about him. He taught her to shoot and sail, he wasn’t about emoting but doing. My daughter’s lesbians teacher just HATED him and me becuase I got along with him.

  6. Jeanette Victoria
    May 28th, 2015 @ 2:18 pm

    There are some old gunsomke episode which also decidely anti-Christian as well. It has always been in the media

  7. mikediver
    May 28th, 2015 @ 2:27 pm

    How about suggesting 100% taxation rates and then distributing it per capita so everything is fair.

  8. Prime Director
    May 28th, 2015 @ 2:44 pm

    Work work work

  9. The Practical Conservative
    May 28th, 2015 @ 3:00 pm

    Eh, the moby screwed up by overreaching. The two sentences about the wife and daughter are typical, all the rest is exaggeration. Guys in the manosphere do advocate financial control and micromanagement a fair bit of the time, but they don’t tend to promote physical abuse of children or women, just overwork of women.

  10. Truth trumps “correct” speech [II Cor 4] | Dark Brightness
    May 28th, 2015 @ 3:24 pm

    […] If it walks like a moby and talks like a moby, it’s probably a moby, and if you don’t know what …. […]

  11. Sean
    May 28th, 2015 @ 5:03 pm

    Because it’s just too hard to believe that someone might actually believe what’s written with regards to male headship, sex roles in marriage/relationships/church.

  12. Glorious Thursday Day Linkage - Freedom's Floodgates
    May 28th, 2015 @ 6:44 pm

    […] McCain chimes in on Feminist Road, pointing out there’s a “Moby” in our […]

  13. Joel P.
    May 28th, 2015 @ 9:31 pm

    “Alas, what you posit as the right is actually left of center.”

    And, alas, this is the typical Paul Elam fallacy: equating right-wing/conservative with the Republican party, as if they are one and the same. They are not, of course, but there’s no reasoning with the AVFM crowd on this point — they made up their minds from the start that feminism has nothing to do with left/right politics, the facts be damned.

    The Men’s Rights Movement is routinely attacked and viciously smeared by leftist individuals and institutions (David Futrelle being one of the chiefs among them). AVFM has been on the receiving end of a number of these attacks. On the other hand, conservatives are either supportive of the MRM or indifferent about it. From what I’ve seen, I would say that the more right-wing a person is the more he’s likely to agree with much of what the MRM stands for.

    And yet Paul Elam and the AVFM folks remain convinced that feminism isn’t a partisan issue and that the left/right spectrum has nothing to do with it.

  14. M. Simon
    May 28th, 2015 @ 11:29 pm

    I always saw it as Furry Road. Heh. But I guess I hark back to another generation when women had hair down there.

    OTOH Conservatives are self defeating with their support of Prohibition and their anti-gay agenda. The gays didn’t do it to you. No fault divorce did it to you. And some of you championed it. And BTW Prohibition makes your enemy – government – stronger.

    What is funny is seeing Progs fight government and Cons supporting it. Talk about role reversal. The Progs are weakening their own cause. Delicious.

    No matter. The FI is dying – bubbles always get bigger before they collapse. And why is FI dying? It doesn’t match nature. Reality will eventually intrude.

    It is just like Communism. Doesn’t matter how many or who believes. It don’t work.

  15. JL
    May 29th, 2015 @ 12:17 am

    There are approximately 150 million guys in the US, there’s gotta be that one jag-wagon who believes this crap. I doubt this is a popular opinion, anymore than the views commonly expressed on VNN are.

  16. Daniel Freeman
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:41 am

    There is some truth to what you say, but recent events have demonstrated that gay marriage really is a Trojan horse for state power, a pretext to force your church and your business to go against your (formerly) free conscience. I didn’t believe the warnings, but I believe it now.

  17. Lamentations
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:48 am

    Troll? This is almost an IQ test: YES, A TROLL. The mocking, over-the-top caricature is dripping from those words. The writer’s condescension and sneer is simply too much of a tell here.

    But, this is what the left actually believes that anyone who opposes feminism must have coursing through their veins and firing in their synapses. To the writer, this was *not* over the top because he imagines all non-feminist males to be Billy Bobs.

  18. Daniel Freeman
    May 29th, 2015 @ 2:05 am

    I perceive their aggressively non-partisan approach as more practical than ideological. The MRM is still a small movement that needs all the allies it can get — and if non-partisan men’s rights (or equity feminism for that matter) serves as a gateway drug for leftists, and then after taking the red pill they can’t help but increasingly notice that the primary sin of the right is to fail to oppose the left strongly enough, then well. That isn’t AVfM’s fault.

  19. Daniel Freeman
    May 29th, 2015 @ 2:22 am

    You know, what we really need is some way to quantify how oppressed we all are, and some way to display it. It’s so embarrassing to correct someone and then discover they’re more oppressed than you, don’t you think? It would make things run so much more smoothly if you could just tell at a glance that someone has so much more Oppression Points (or whatever) that it would just be cruel piling-on to criticize them in any way.

  20. M. Simon
    May 29th, 2015 @ 7:57 am

    But there is a perfectly reasonable way to deal with this – get the state out of marriage except in the case of children where divorce requires a division of property.

    And for God’s sake – end no fault divorce. That is an abrogation of the contract before the ink is dry.

    As to your reasonable point. Don’t fight gay marriage – that puts you on their ground. Fight for freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. The American way.

    I know this is hard to do but give ground until you get on a better ground. It is what every good general does.

    Many Cons have a hard time with this but your orientation should be to Liberty. How can I give you as much freedom as possible while also freeing myself.

    Where Cons went wrong was in thinking that they could – with enough power – avoid the distasteful. And that worked (not so well for those disliked) as long as they held power. That power is waning. There is now the counter reaction of the formerly oppressed to deal with.

    The desire for power is the root of all Evil. And that is as true of God’s people as it is of the Devil’s.

  21. Classical Values » The Root Of All Evil
    May 29th, 2015 @ 9:15 am

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  22. Gunga
    May 29th, 2015 @ 10:21 am

    Whenever anyone talks right/left, then uses “Republican” as a synonym for “right”…it makes my eyes roll back so far in my head that I can see my next thought forming on the cellular level…

  23. Voland
    May 29th, 2015 @ 10:59 am

    A strong well financed, well organized men’s rights movement will have a natural counterbalancing effect on the body politic. This is not to say MRA will be all conservative or Republican but it will take much of the wind out of the left wing’s sales because they will begin paying a price for their radical anti-male actions. In effect, what will happen is that the left and perhaps even feminism, Inc. will be forced to have a ‘reformation’ whereby they will begin exiling their more radical elements in order to stop repelling normal people. When men start standing up for their rights and interests, it will be called “Patriarchal”, “Conservative”, “Republican” when in reality what it will be is equality.

  24. armenia4ever
    May 29th, 2015 @ 12:53 pm

    Guilt by association has become an incrediblely popular tactic as of late because people rarely check raging clickbait headlines for actual context and related articles on whatever the newest outrage is.

    Mobys and Sockpuppets are incredibly effective – essentially the next evolution of strawmen – because all you need is one of then to be seen so that every actual arguement you have is dismissed.

    What suprises me is how well Clarey’s articles went “up the chain” from as Ryan Holiday puts it in Trust Me, I’m Lying. Several of the medium traffic sites that escalated the story further quoted some of those sock puppets. Most of them included the one that Futrelle focused on in his tripe article.

    My social media feed was of course filled with people confirming to each other about how crazy and nasty MRAs were.

    It’s surprisingly effective and will continue to be. At some point, it may be time to fight fire with fire.

  25. Rashmi Singhania
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:32 pm

    Your dirty mocking twat one-liners might win you admiration of imbeciles at avfm but not me. I am a strong woman from India and I am not going to tolerate the crap going on at avfm. I am write from my heart and all you men want us to be 1950s American housewives.

  26. Andrejovich Dietrich
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:39 pm

    “I am write from my heart and all you men want us to be 1950s American housewives.”

    Well you obviously do have the strength to mock incorrectly. I am not into gaining admiration of Mocking Twats. Strong woman from India. That would be the heart of false rape accusers right?

  27. Rashmi Singhania
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:42 pm

    All you bunch of AVFM fanatics are sick. You want to pounce on a lone woman at a public forum and shame her into silence. You can’t get away with it. Just can’t.

  28. Andrejovich Dietrich
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:47 pm

    As I recall you were the one doing the pouncing. As well as continuing to shame me into silence.

    Ditto Cupcake.

  29. Rashmi Singhania
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:48 pm

    http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/marital-rape-a-feminist-tool-to-criminalize-marriage-in-india/

    Then what exactly is the comments section at the above link.

  30. Andrejovich Dietrich
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:53 pm

    Don’t know don’t care…You came on here and started poutraging all over me here.

  31. Rashmi Singhania
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:56 pm

    So, you can take stand and stay away from AVFM in solidarity. Ok deal?

  32. Andrejovich Dietrich
    May 29th, 2015 @ 1:58 pm

    Are we into the total irrelevant issue portion of your rant?

  33. Rashmi Singhania
    May 29th, 2015 @ 2:00 pm

    Boycott avfm

  34. Andrejovich Dietrich
    May 29th, 2015 @ 2:03 pm

    Go for it Princess. Has your train of thought finally reached its caboose?

  35. Rashmi Singhania
    May 29th, 2015 @ 2:06 pm

    All you dirty men out here – are the very men who assault a lone woman walking down a street at night and make her the object of your lust. Yes, I understand your pathetic lust driven psyche, consumed by immoral passions.

  36. Andrejovich Dietrich
    May 29th, 2015 @ 2:13 pm

    Is this the boycotting part?

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