Talk:Manosphere/Archive1

Roosh V
Anybody up for contributing to a section on this scumbag? I don't believe we have an article on sex tourism but he's notable for combining pick-up artistry with... ahem... 'vacations' to poorer countries. I think it would improve the section on PUAs if we include some comment on Return of Kings/Roosh V anyway, his name crops up a lot on PUA forums.

Also, this is a little off topic, but does anybody else find researching this hugely disturbing? Reading into the Manosphere and the absurd amount of rape apologism across the blogs/forums has been almost as affecting as my obsession with Peter Sotos and the Apocalypse Culture/Rapid Eye snuff magazines. It's insane that so many people support these groups --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 15:06, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Disturbing? Friend, I took my first real look at some of the sites mentioned in this article and a few others the days after the UCSB shooting and told myself "never again." You and anyone else who is willing to wade into that shit in order to shed critical (in both senses of the word) light onto what's going on in the bowels of the internet has my undying respect. Father Vivian O&#39;Blivion (talk) 15:21, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I started reading their blogs/arguing with them a few years ago when a friend of mine who is a rape survivor started receiving twitter/facebook messages from them that were... well... you can guess what sort of thing they would be sending. I hadn't really been a vocal feminist before that but communities like these make me ashamed of my gender and whatever I can do is worth the time. I've found the easiest way to stomach the things they say is to try to pretend they are fictitious. I've read a lot of fucked up books so when I read these articles or posts I try to frame it in a non-real setting where their words can't affect real people. I'm not really sure what you can do to combat hate speech but the last thing we need to do is keel over like Wikipedia and portray them as being in any way moderate. Believe me, they are anything but --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 15:30, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * They dominate their own little world, and like KKK groups *shouldn't* need to be addressed. but thanks 1990's and the baby internet, these individual idiots hiding out in their basement, or in a house in walla walla with their bunny suddenly realized there were more people out there who felt as they did.  And thus a hate group was formed. sighs.  I knew I would have to speak out against "it's women's fault they are raped, cause: reasons", but never in a million years figured I would have to seriously say "No, it is not women's fault that you are confined to being masculine" or "No, it isn't women's fault that there are no women in the army".  Course, i never thought I'd have to say "You as a company do not/should not have a right to tell me I can take birth control", much less "No, the world really isn't 6,000 years old".  sighs.  it's all the interenet's fault!One tin soldier (talk) 16:34, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It's definitely something to keep an eye on at least. The upside to the internet is it makes it very easy to group together the counter-arguments to the misinformation that they spread and present it to those who have not been exposed to them. I was thinking earlier about why RationalWiki has quite critical articles concerning them - and then I read some of the articles on here about cults. I think they largely do operate as an online cult, at least, I doubt these groups really help any of them improve their lives, but it gives a job for "journalists" like Paul Elam. If anything, it probably makes them less trusting of women and more irrational. I think they are almost as dangerous for men as they are for women --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 16:50, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Playing pop-psychologist for a second, I would agree with your last statement 100%. not just manosphere, but any group that is deeply bigoted.  It feeds your fringe views and reinforces that "those mooslimes are scary scary terrorist people!".  But the manosphere is unique, i think, in that there is significant evidence people who have such views about women, about men being 2nd class, etc., become more violent in their private life when they have those views reinforced (by news, internet, or choice in movies, etc).  There is also something oddly "i am a victim" about manosphere pages, at least I think so.  like... like... "this is the excuse I give myself for not succeeding in my marriage, for being fired from my job, or from getting bad grades at school".  everything is women's fault, so they don't have to face their own failures.  One tin soldier (talk) 17:05, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * That's probably due to the "strong desire and a profound distaste for women" described in article. Quite a lot of activist racists do not engage in mixed-race relationships, partly due to white separatism, but there have been reports and news articles of some who have done so being very abusive. It's the same with activist homophobes who engage in secret homosexual relationships, that sort of identity self-loathing must lead to unhealthy relationships. However, it does seem that a lot of MUAs and most PUAs are romantically interested in women (aka straight males). I'm not saying that all MRAs and PUAs are abusive to their partners, I doubt it if anything, but it certainly doesn't lead to healthy attitudes concerning relationships, and I can't imagine that people who take the words of Manosphere writers like Matt Forney and Theodore Beale seriously could not have a warped idea of the female gender --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 17:18, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Jack Donovan should probably go in this article, too. He's gay (but he doesn't like that word, he prefers "androphile"). People like Donovan think that real men should seek out relationships with other men, like Spartan soldiers. It's basically the male equivalent of lesbian separatist feminism. BoggleYourMind (talk) 04:27, 27 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay done --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 17:23, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Structure
I've just realised that a few of the subsections (F. Roger Devlin, Chateau Heartiste, r/theredpill) could fit under 'Men's rights movement' and 'Pick-up artists'. Could it work if we moved them down into one subsection called 'Notable members and blogs' or 'Inside the Manosphere' or something like that? It would be somewhere to put the Reddit subsection too --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 22:08, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Probably. Their internal divisions should be noted, but I think we shouldn't worry too much about them - they all intermingle, and they all sup from the same sewer - David Gerard (talk) 09:48, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

In need of major cleanup
We should have an article on this, no doubt about it, but it needs to be better than this. All it consists of, in large part, at present, is copypastes of the articles about the individual websites constituting the manosphere that we already have. What's the point of that? Perhaps brief summaries of the websites constituting it (including those we don't yet have individual articles on, eg... CoAlpha Brotherhood, MGTOW Forums, The Spearhead, Vox Populi, etc...), different from the articles themselves, would be better.


 * Yeah. OTOH, this is a vast improvement on nothing and is already useful enough to refer people to. And saved us the ick of writing a separate article on Roosh - David Gerard (talk) 21:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Given that it's barely a week old, I think it's in pretty good shape. Give it time. I would be interested to see if anyone can say anything about the history of the topic, going back to the pre-even-my-mother-is-on-the-internet days of BBSs and alt and rec dot forums. THAT would be cool (...and something that a lot of our writing on internet culture is sorely lacking in, as though the Internet has always had the shape it has now). Father Vivian O&#39;Blivion (talk) 22:29, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Whew. Good luck to anyone trawling through noisy old usenet postings. From even earlier, ISTR a short SF story from the late fifties or early sixties, where the less sympathetic of two male characters had a man-to-man chat with the chief protagonist, announcing his intention to woo the human female in the plot, and asking him not to interfere if he heard rapey noises coming from the next room, since "they both knew how things work in the real world." Or something like that. It wasn't all that memorable, as a story. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 23:09, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

4chan
While I haven't seen them listed anywhere as a Manosphere website, they do have the topical similarities pointed out by Weaseloid. I was thinking, while we have it in article, would it be worth including information of events like this: ? I'd say it is very possible from discussions I have had with anti-feminists on 4chan that they are MRAs who have switched forums so they can be more anonymous and ignoring that, and from that it would be on topic to include it. You used to get lots of "muh gender wars" posts and comments like that but nowadays the MRA community is largely accepted, even on /pol. Opinions? --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 21:22, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Pretty sure I wouldn't count it myself. It's a general festering toxic swamp, not any particular variety of toxic swamp so specific as this - David Gerard (talk) 22:55, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm not sure if I would either, it's more of a general forum that has some overlap due to its prevalent misogyny. The fact that they have had quite a few viral anti-feminist attacks is what makes me think the user base overlaps, things like the #endfathersday hoax hashtag are exactly the sort of thing I can imagine MRAs would do with additional anonymity. I'm not sure if I've seen it linked by other forums or articles though. Do you think we should keep it in the article? --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * That strikes me much more as motivated by general trolling than sincere MRAness. I could be wrong though - David Gerard (talk) 23:17, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It could be either, people have tried to use the large anonymous user base for all sorts of campaigns. It only needs one MRA instigator who can convince them it will be fun --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 23:58, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Two sources from SBS
Because I want to expand this at some point - MRAs and PUAs  --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 09:14, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Misandry Bubble
Should we work this MRA manifesto into the article somehow? It is not a whole website, but the post has been cited a lot within the manosphere. I was blissfully unaware of said sphere until someone linked me to this article a couple of years back. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes definitely, it's quite influential within the sphere. Maybe we could make a new section of Theories between Inside the Manosphere and Criticisms? It could link to the glossary. Also, I hope that you don't mind me moving the section on the Spearhead. I was intending to do a write up before I went away and I forgot when I got back. I think I'm going to go for theantifeminist next when I get the time --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 21:29, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * No problem -- I just tacked that section on at the end, but above 4chan since it is primarily an MRA site. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:37, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I just moved it a little up on the page. Good job with the section by the way --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 21:39, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Pseudo-scientific homophobia on Return of Kings (link dump if any others have content)
--Drowninginlimbo (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) Numbered list item

Is this going to be just a copy of the listed articles?
No, seriously?--ZooGuard (talk) 11:36, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry I wrote and added the domestic violence section to both articles. I'm not really sure, it definitely helps to have a summary of the blogs themselves as, despite their similarities, they do have differences. Maybe it goes into too much detail to have those two sections beneath AVFM. I was hoping that would be just a part of it --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 11:51, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay I took that out. I intended to write it for the Elam article anyway and thought I'd include it in both. Maybe it would be better to summarise with some mention of how they are connected? I still think there's room to use information from the articles. It would be the exact same information presented in different ways --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 11:57, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Bronies?
Should some part of their culture be included? 07:28, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Mostly unrelated, although we could probably have a fun article on them separately --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 07:45, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Return of Kings? How about "Return of Jesters" instead?
You know, it's said to best combat negativity with humor. (Not sure where it's said. All I know is that it's true!) So why not discuss the best way to confront these "Manosphere" yokels with some good-natured ribbing. Take RoK for instance. What better site to start with than that one? Only question is, how to do it? One idea in mind, that anyone here can use, is what I like to call, "Mock The RoK"! Just take an article from RoK, and do a "dramatic reading" of it, as well as riffing, but also include the bile-laden comment section as well! (However, said comments could still just get the "Pony Thread Simulator" treatment. Example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPB1uLEBkD0) Again, just some thoughts. As the header implies, I don't expect this to be taken seriously!)-Chair tater (talk) 09:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * We Hunted The Mammoth occasionally does stuff like this to manosphere videos - David Gerard (talk) 10:34, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Clean up
I went ahead and cleaned up this article and a few related articles - I added additional content and links as well, and replaced snark with more neutral and factually written content. The ratio of "snark to substance" shouldn't be excessive. I also added additional content and links.--206.255.11.166 (talk) 20:02, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

RooshV's "hunting-down-and-killing SJW reporters is fine" story
Originally posted at WIGOC. Should we include it? It seems like a great example of his extremity. 23:53, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Quite possibly. Is it amongst the worst he's posted? I fear it may not be - David Gerard (talk) 12:09, 14 February 2015 (UTC)