User:Okyoureabeast/sandbox

The Manosphere is a collection of internet blogs, cultural discussion groups, interpersonal interactions, and online clubhouses whose entire focus revolves around issues and interests common to men and masculinity. . The main discussion of the Manosphere tends to focus on feminism and its effects on men and masculinity . To a lesser extent, the it also discusses lifestyle, travel, literary, and academic subjects.

Risks related to being apart of the Manosphere

Writing and being apart of the Manosphere is fraught with risks. Even though most blogs are written by people located in the United States where free-speech is written into law, many writers and bloggers of the Manosphere have been subject to threats of being outed by various groups.

Individuals such as Daryush Valizadeh have been placed on watch lists for hate speech by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It also isn't uncommon for Manosphere writers to stop blogging for of fear losing their employment if their their online pseudonyms are exposed.

Main stream media has also not been too kind to the movement as a whole. In 2013, ABC's 20/20 (U.S. TV series) attempted to report on the Manosphere from a leftist and progressive point of view calling the Manosphere "a collection of websites, Facebook pages and chat rooms where men vent their rage and spew anti-women rhetoric."

Matt Fourney responded to these allegations, calling them "fabrications and outright lies" as well as documenting several instances of quotes taken out of context. Most notably:

The second paragraph uses the line “I really wouldn’t mind shooting a [expletive] dead in the face, they are evil, all of them,” taken from the men’s rights’ activism site A Voice for Men, as an example of the anti-woman rhetoric of the manosphere. However, the quote was taken from an article where it was used as an example of what you can’t post on the site. AVfM founder Paul Elam made it clear in that article that anyone who made violent threats on his site would be banned immediately. The other quote in that paragraph, “Women are the natural enemies of men,” is conveniently unsourced. “Well, the 20/20 Piece on the ‘Manosphere’ is Obviously Going to Be a Trainwreck.”

Matt Forney

Criticism of the Manosphere:

In its Intelligence Report, Spring 2012, Issue Number: 145 the Southern Poverty Law Center categorized the Manosphere as a hate group supporting misogyny (hatred of women). On its website the Southern Poverty Law Center said of the Manosphere:

The so-called “manosphere” is peopled with hundreds of websites, blogs and forums dedicated to savaging feminists in particular and women, very typically American women, in general. Although some of the sites make an attempt at civility and try to back their arguments with facts, they are almost all thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express. What follows are brief descriptions of a dozen of these sites. Another resource is the Man Boobz website (manboobz.com), a humorous pro-feminist blog (its tagline is “Misogyny: I Mock It”) that keeps a close eye on these and many other woman-hating sites.

Rebuttal to the SPLC's Criticism of the Manosphere:

The SPLC was roundly ridiculed in the Manosphere for publicly admitting it had relied heavily on the input of male feminist and satirist David Futrell, who calls himself "ManBoobz" and who has created a website Manboobz.com specifically to publish his attacks against men's rights and other groups in the Manosphere.

In addition to the outright ridicule a number of websites in Manosphere responded directly to the SPLC's claims.

The [SPLC] ... dismisses all legitimate men's rights issues on the grounds that some of the comments on men's rights sites are a little angry. It goes without saying that the occasional angry comment by some man who has suffered false rape or domestic violence accusations, or who at the behest of his ex spouse has been forcibly denied his children or property by the family courts, has to be separated from the validity of the movement's underlying issues. No reasonable person would so completely lose sight of those issues because of such comments as the SPLC has done, just as no reasonable person would say that comments made in anger by those who had experienced concentration camps, slavery, genocide, or rape could ever invalidate the legitimate grievances of the victims.

One prominent member of the Manosphere who responded was Paul Elam who's website A Voice for Men was identified in the SPLC report. Elam responded with an open letter to Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center in which Elam stated :

Contrary to what readers of your site may be led to believe, the goals of SPLC and AVfM are quite similar: We both work to identify groups who seek to oppress others, and inform the public of the inequities they would perpetuate.

Elam went on to invite Cohen to a discussion to "clear up some misconceptions about AVfM so that SPLC and its supporters can reconsider their view of my service", claiming that:

Men and boys face very serious problems in modern society. Men are more likely than women to be homeless, on society’s bottom rungs.[1] Men are more likely than women to commit suicide, as well.[2] America’s exploding prison population, which overwhelmingly includes and victimizes the working class and new poor, contains more than 2 million people, but under 100,000 women.[3] This disparity has had profound effects on African-American men, as more of them are incarcerated than in post-secondary education.[4] Young men, ignorant rather than criminal, are placed on lifelong sex offender registries that prevent them from obtaining education and even healthcare, and ensuring that they will never contribute to society.[5] Relatedly, male attendance in higher education has fallen to 40% and continues to diminish,[6] and men lag far behind women in obtaining advanced degrees.[7] The performance of boys in our grade, middle and high schools is deteriorating. Meanwhile, men have become a minority in the workforce, ensuring their further social and economic marginalization, as well as any hope of upward economic mobility.[8] Men face additional disparities in selective service, reproductive rights, healthcare funding, and many other areas.

Elam's letter concluded with the statement:

There are hundreds of websites dedicated to real, actual hate on the Internet, with more springing up all the time. AVFM, a human rights organization, is not one of them.

The Manosphere for Women:

Though it is recognized as a primarily male space and therefore prone to very direct and sometimes rough speech, women are also present in the Manosphere as both readers and content creators (bloggers, forum commenters). Some women have provided guidance to other women on how to gain the valuable insight to be obtained from the Manosphere if one can avoid being offended or dissuaded by its occasional anger and bluntness.

One woman blogger suggested other women first take some time to read about the major issues and then step back from their emotional reactions to think about what is being said. She counseled women to bear in mind that men speak very differently (especially to each other) than women. Men speaking cold facts simply and directly without emotion can sound harsh or angry to women she cautioned, at the same time reminding women that this is how men tend to learn best and these sites are directed at men.

Don’t Take it Personally ... The writers don’t know you.

When you are confused about what you read vs. what you have been taught, ask questions. Not leading question, but straightforward and direct questions. Defensiveness will result in an unproductive clash, though you're always going to get men who will be angry and rude, man of whom have good reason to feel that way so I suggest letting it go. There is rarely any reason to respond. But there are a lot of highly intelligent men in the Manosphere who know what they're talking about and have done great amounts of research .

You are, in fact, a feminist: You may not consider yourself a feminist. A lot of us didn’t. That does not mean that we didn’t whole heartedly swallow a good deal of what they were selling without even realizing it.

Seminal Works:

• The Misandry Bubble
• The Manosphere for Dummies
• The Manosphere - Welcome to the Manosphere

Media (Video):

• Misandry - Men Don't Exist on YouTube
• Feminism and the Disposable Male on YouTube
• An Exercise in Inherent Female Greed via Briffault's law and Feminism on YouTube

Books:

• Bang: More Lays In 60 Days
• Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men
• The Myth of Male Power
• Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man
• Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture
• The Manipulated Man
• Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It
• Women: Theory and Practice
• The Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011