The rise of the 'Alt-Right' culture - thoughts?

[zlemflolia]

"anti-islam has absolutely nothing to do with hating or being racist against muslims, it has to do with showing liberals how supporting it makes them not liberal'

 

which i would argue politely is a total crock of shit

 

I actually have less of a problem with people who openly admit bigotry as a reason for fueling certain beliefs they have, so you're saying that there are a plenty of valid feminist critical people out there who are in no way fueled by a conservative ideology or misogyny? I just needed to clarify that as the final sentence on your post

 

Yes, this. And I have no idea who Sam Harris is and know nothing about anti-islam so I can't say how similar it seems.

 

But yes, the part I bolded is 100% the one point I was originally trying to make. There are indeed plenty of anti-feminist people who are in no way conservative and in no way misogynistic, in fact most of them are as liberal pro-gay pro-abortion anti-war as you can get, and many of them are women like GirlWritesWhat and of course Mercedes Carrera (who is not some mascot and who I only mention specifically because you posted a video of hers in the OP)

 

I hate the whole idea of ideologies and groups and movements anyway. They result in so many misunderstandings and obfuscations of reality. Feminism is great when it comes to trying to prevent female genital mutilation in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's awesome in principle when it tries to prevent rape.

 

But in reality it's not excellent when it attacks men for giving legitimate advice to avoid rape, like "don't go out in a miniskirt and get drunk at 2 am in bars filled with horny equally drunk men, without a good way to get home, you might get raped". That is perfectly acceptable advice and in no way is a justification of rape as they claim.

 

Feminism is not excellent when it tries to claim that women are oppressed in America, "make less money for the same work", and that "rape of women is trivialized by society" when literally those claims could not be further from the truth.

 

Nobody in society is hated more than rapists, not even murderers. Look how rapists are treated in prisons. "Rape culture", i.e. the trivialization and justification of the rape of women, does not fucking exist except in isolated bubbles of misogyny and violence which are not representative of the whole of society.

 

If there's a rape culture it's that of trivializing and justifying the rape of men. There are large communities of men online who have been raped or abused by their partners or random women in some way and have absolutely no recourse. If they go to the police they literally get laughed at and told to go home, or called a faggot for not wanting to have sex. That is rape culture yet the idea that a man can be raped is routinely denied or trivialized by all prominent feminists.

 

Anyway whatever, inb4 hoards of people say "Lol MRA hates women misogynist scum get off WATMM" like other times I've posted similar things here

[delet...]

 

 

interesting, so would you say there is an 'anti-feminist' cultural movement (that exists outside of academia) totally separate from carrying the baggage of what is basically a hip millennial version of Fox News? I have not personally seen it . Definitely would be interested in taking a look at some of that just for more accurate context.

 

there is most definitely an anti 3rd wave feminism current which is disconnected from the right wing caricature you seem to be fond of in this thread. Just because something is repeated by these people it does not mean they own that discussion. They are using things like this to bring people to their tent for the precise reason that these notions are aligned with popular sentiment, which means that yes it is seperate from the baggage in the mind of an watmm cultural worrier.

 

i don't doubt this, but 3rd-wave feminism is a pretty different animal from just talking about things like wage-gap and maternity leave isn't it? Most of these people seem to be going after very classic 'feminist' paradigms, and also keep in mind I don't really know the difference between different 'waves' of feminism. so anyone here who feels the need to educate me please do

 

 

But there is no wage gap when you dig in to the very easy to understand numbers and understand the hokey methodology with which they produced theirs, and third wave feminism (you know what this term means robbie, don't bullshit around) uses this 'stat' as their number one talking point. I think that you have somehow lost your critical faculties where this topic is concerned and as zeff stated, you are conflating the normal and sane practise of understanding reality with there being a 50's era cliché of anti-woman's rights personality hidden behind. As if we should just give up and let people angrily lie to us because they happen to also be women, seriouslor. It's really starting to bug me how you won't let it go, or concede the point, so i'll retreat from this pointless fest. Zeff seems to be saying it well enough.

[awepittance]

Im actually not really interested in having the feminist discussion at all, that was not the purpose of making the thread. i take a little bit of offense to you trying to gauge how I actually land on that specific topic and imaging that I'm trying to paint a caricature of all people arguing against feminism. I am much more interested in the rise of what I see as a very specific alt-right media culture regardless of what 'true' points they can make about feminism or any other subject. This culture encompasses a lot of of different right leaning belief systems, and whether they've adopted what you see as 'valid' feminist critique and mixed it in with a bunch of utter bullshit, isn't my problem. I'd argue thats more of a problem for people who aren't conservative or misogynist having their (as you describe them) reality based arguments distorted and co-opted by complete morons ( who happen to be very loud right now)

[zlemflolia]

I don't know what waves of feminism there are but they can probably be grouped like this:

 

Level 1) FGM should be eradicated, sex trafficking of young girls should be stopped

Level 2) We should do more to stop violence against women

Level 3) Society systematically discriminates against women by socializing them to like girly things which pay less

Level 4) Rape of women is trivialized, rape culture exists, women are paid less for the same job!

Level 5) All sex is rape

Level 6) Looking at a woman and thinking sexual thoughts is rape

Level 7) Literally kill all men

 

Level 1) Is obvious

Level 2) Is completely true but ignoring the fact that violence against men of all forms is significantly more common than violence against women, so yeah no we shouldn't stop "violence against women", we should stop "violence against people"

Level 3) Is arguably true, yeah, probably, but these ones tend to undermine female agency and assume all women would naturally love engineering if not for their pesky parents buying them Barbie Dolls which is obviously not true

Level 4) Yeah no, that's just not true sorry and the stats directly contradict you

Level 5) No it's not, and now you're actually being misogynistic by undermining female agency and their right to say "I want and enjoy sex"

Level 6) Yeah no

Level 7) Please do me first to spare me from your nonsense

 

tl;dr

Anti-feminism has nothing to do with conservatism or misogyny and the most common feminist talking points in mainstream media are literally complete bullshit, there is no rape culture, there is no discriminatory wage gap, there is no oppression of women in the western world

 

Anyway yeah I will stop discussing this as it's only tangentially barely related to this thread but just an important clarification to make that so many fucking people seem to be morally opposed to even considering a possibility

[delet...]

Im actually not really interested in having the feminist discussion at all, that was not the purpose of making the thread. i take a little bit of offense to you trying to gauge how I actually land on that specific topic and imaging that I'm trying to paint a caricature of all people arguing against feminism. I am much more interested in the rise of what I see as a very specific alt-right media culture regardless of what 'true' points they can make about feminism or any other subject. This culture encompasses a lot of of different right leaning belief systems, and whether they've adopted what you see as 'valid' feminist critique and mixed it in with a bunch of utter bullshit, isn't my problem. I'd argue thats more of a problem for people who aren't conservative or misogynist having their (as you describe them) reality based arguments distorted and co-opted by complete morons ( who happen to be very loud right now)

 

you can't change your argued points in this direction, after the fact mate, hah. You said what you said, you meant what you meant and you implied what you implied, are you stoned ? I get the feeling that this is where this is all coming from. heh.

 

nwae, all the best.

[coax]

I will say I'm really tired of the arrogance of libertarians / capitalist anarchists. There is a logic in capitalism that can't be denied, because it's basically the law of the jungle except with money instead of violence. And the non aggression principle is also very simple and seductive because it just oozes truth at first. The problem is it's impossible to debate any kind of nuance with that kind of person, and I've tried several times. They have a few basic principles and any deviation or explanation of social phenomena like poverty, war or human psychology that deviates from their view is instantly rejected and not even contemplated. People like Stefan Molyneux also popularized mens rights / anti feminism and various other things like his perception of poor people into a pretty sinister mix of what I'd say is your alt-right phrase. The only bullet point that doesn't fit is the one about not being against usa's foreign policy, as these people don't believe the military could exist without the state, and hate everything about the military industrial complex, but they don't have a strong view on specific foreign policy actions / events one way or the other, only in a general sense.

 

I guess the people you've seen blend the new libertarian view with the sam harris foreign policy somehow, maybe because they haven't been exposed to the anti-government sentiments as much. It sounds to me like there are several combinations of several strains of thought but that they all agree on the things they agree on, so to speak. I think it's pretty scary because everyone is so extreme. I've tried numerous times to be the contrarian in youtube comments or on reddit, and it's extremely difficult. I try to bring up points but they have various tactics to ignore, redirect and control the conversation in a way that makes it very hard to agree on anything or even agree to disagree. I honestly couldn't say how much traction it has, but it feels like they are a minority still, mostly due to the seeming popularity of mainstream politics still, in most countries I am familiar with. If there ever was a true revolution, there would be a substantial change in votes, whether complete removal from the voting process or maybe a big rise in independents / small parties or at least that is my impression without having gone into it real deep.

[Guest cult fiction]

 

I never understood how someone could make someone being gay, trans, fat, religious, or whatever their business. I think there are a lot of snide children out in the world that never grew up and in the age where everyone has a soap-box, we are seeing all the shades of various peoples psyches on a super public international platform. God help us all...

It's sort of caused by the two sides feeding each other's extremism. The LGBT movement bullshit tries to make "queers," as they call it, demand recognition from everyone else (through gay pride parades and similar scams), and the conservatives respond to that by not ignoring it and instead only giving them the "oppression" that they claim to be fighting in the first place. Obviously both sides are the enemy of actual sexual "minorities," but the LGBT-thumpers too fucking stupid and blind to realize that and the conservatives don't see that they're just making everything go to shit by fueling them.

 

It's a similar deal with the artificial "atheists vs. theists" dichotomy.

 

Yeah mang, the best way to enact societal change in the dark recesses of America's heartland is to just keep quiet about it, because conservatively minded people are way good at changing their mind without massive pressure. Too many good WATMM posts in this thread, keep it up!

[zlemflolia]

 

 

interesting, so would you say there is an 'anti-feminist' cultural movement (that exists outside of academia) totally separate from carrying the baggage of what is basically a hip millennial version of Fox News? I have not personally seen it . Definitely would be interested in taking a look at some of that just for more accurate context.

 

There is a pretty large online community that is only partially overlapped with the much hated MRA movement which attempts to look at the claims of feminists from an objective standpoint and dissect them.

 

Some claims are easily taken apart, for instance the wage gap. There is no evidence what the wage gap is a result of institutionalized sexism, and in reality it is simply a result of differences in personal choices made by both sexes, which are admittedly partially based on social conditioning but also based on inherent psychological gender dimorphism. Sound obvious? Tell it to the most vocal feminists and even Obama.

 

Some claims are true but only vacuously so, for instance that women don't have a say within the going-ons of society because women do not hold as many political offices as men. This is true in that they literally do not have "as much representation" as in warm bodies in the rooms of Parliament and Congress, but the men that are there tend to advocate for female priorities more then male priorities regardless. VAWA, primary aggressor laws, preponderance of the evidence in university sexual harassment cases, continued lack of draft enrollment despite the newly gained right to fight in combat positions, the list is endless.

 

Correctly contextualized and explained statistics do not lie. Otherwise they tend to

 

Suicide rate, homelessness rate, high school and university graduation rate, debtor's prison rate, gender specific health funding rate, workplace injury and death rate - all of these play wild favoritism towards women. Yet this is never acknowledged or considered significant, and men who bring it up are told to man up and "check their privilege", yeah I don't see any privilege. If the genders were reversed on any of these issues they would be the new number one feminist talking points

 

Anyway specific great examples of people making videos on these topics on YouTube are GirlWritesWhat, Gad Saad, and yeah I don't know who else off the top of my head.

 

tl;dr

Anti-feminism has absolutely nothing to do with conservatism and lots to do with reality.

 

just because you can't see any clear evidence of it doesn't really mean much for an issue this complex. the whole point is that sexism, misogyny and racism are so ingrained into the minds of many powerful men, this doctrine has dominated for centuries and though we have made a lot of improvement it is still there but it exists on more of a subconscious level. to blame women for not making the right decisions or whatever is disappointing. that basically ignores the very real history of gender inequality that people had to and still are fighting for. it's a very privileged assertion to make. if you're sick of the phrase 'check your privilege' it's a good indicator that you really ought to consider where you're coming from saying things like this.

 

and that last sentence is particularly pig headed and ignorant. anti-feminism in and of itself is a very ugly concept. trying to justify it like you are doing is taking the actions of a small minority who are just trying to practice a degree of social consciousness and using it as an excuse to ignore the larger issue of oppression which is the real 'reality' here. you can either accept or deny that. but it is real.

 

that is why i don't like arguments like 'but what about violence against men?' and 'but you can be racist against white people too!'. it ignores thousands of years of institutionalised hatred and oppression, and ignores the privilege white people (particularly men) take for granted on a daily basis. when people like kim davis or mel gibson can exist in 2015, why would those things no longer be an issue? seriously, it's no coincidence that a large majority of people that hold these beliefs are extremely privileged themselves. that should be enough to shut down any argument right there.

 

 

I've read this a few times and can't find a single, substantial, factual point you've actually made, just insults and telling me I'm blind to my own privilege and should be looking harder

 

 

Can you provide some concrete examples of male privilege rather than just saying "it exists and you're ignorant if you haven't looked hard enough to find it"

[Guest WNS000]

I think it is wrong to label somebody "alt-right", "liberal" or whatever. It is more complicated than that. How would you label me?

 

I am:

• anti-islam
• anti-religion
• anti-atheism
• anti-nazism
• anti-totalitarianism
• anti-multiculturalism
• anti-natalism
• pro-science
• pro-democracy
• pro-feminism
• pro-LGBT
• pro-abortion
• pacifist (if possible)
• agnostic
• xenophobic
• racist

...and more.

 

[Salvatorin]

ask lumpy

[Adieu]

Zoe Quinn is a very real example of the cancerous "feminists" out there.

[hello spiral]

lol

 

edit: @salv

[Candiru]

Look at reddit Redpill.

 

There's a whole online community of guys who perform mental gymnastics and have somehow never met a nice girl.

 

But that said, I've had a black person with rich parents tell me to check my privilege and I thought about turning the tables on them and mugging them. I regret not doing that, tbh.

[goDel]

I'm lost on the direction of this thread, but wanted to say a couple of things.

On the alt-right thing. I think I 've noticed something similar, although I wouldn't necessarily label it right or left. But I noticed, that people are becoming more clever at building their arguments. They tend to take more time in building their case and try to look at more sides of the argument before they go into why their view is best and all that. It goes beyond people going off on their gut feelings and calling people names. Imo, this is something broader than some potential right wing controlled plan to attract more young people into their ranks. Although the change feels more distinct on that side of the political spectrum. (I'd attribute those feelings to my personal bias, or perhaps the way Fox misrepresents conservative thinking)

Again though, I see it as a different thing to just left-right. Another example besides the feminist/anti-feminist movements is the black-twitter thing. Which I see as mostly an equal rights thing and is, imo, something which is beyond left-right. This is more about people getting control over a discussion which used to be about them, instead of by them.

Second thing is the importance comediants seem to have in these discussions. It could be me, but it looks like theres a johnstewardisation of political discussions. And its not just a us thing either. Here in the netherlands we've got our own taste of black twitter, for instance. And a couple of comediants tend to be very dominant. I'm guessing the stand up comediants can be good front runners for equal rights movement. Apart from being on a stage, they tend to be very good at presenting reality from some minority point of view with a good sense of sarcasm. Humor can be a powerful tool when confronting majority-bias, i guess.

[zlemflolia]

 

i can't really help you man. my point is that these things can't necessarily be measured by statistics in the way you are expecting. just be assured that these things are very real and you are in denial. btw the zoe quinn thing is self evident, but if you're not sure what i'm talking about just google it.

 

seriously are you expecting surveys that they hand out to people being like 'how sexist are you?'. the people that exhibit this sort of behavior do not realise it themselves. like yourself. just look at the horrific views people hold in youtube comments, tweets, all that. how would that not spill over into other areas of society?

 

 

I don't care how sexist people are, I don't care what views people have. These things are not quantifiable as you say so people can spew whatever bullshit they want. All I care about is the affects these views have on others, and those ARE quantifiable. "Oh people are sexist and it negatively affects me in x way!" okay well show me numbers verifying you are indeed negatively affected in x way then

 

All I care about is raw facts, that is all you can care about on issues like this. If feminists by and large say "rape culture is a thing and we need to stop it" I expect hard fucking facts and evidence showing what percentage of people are okay with rape, and they just aren't there. Reality actually dictates the exact opposite of what they are saying in this case (since rapists are basically universally despised in western culture), and that tends to be a pretty common trend with these feminist talking points

 

So yeah I guess I just can't expect people to present evidence of their claims when I ask for it, they "just can't help [me]" well so be it but forgive me for remaining skeptical.

 

Look at reddit Redpill.

 

There's a whole online community of guys who perform mental gymnastics and have somehow never met a nice girl.

 

But that said, I've had a black person with rich parents tell me to check my privilege and I thought about turning the tables on them and mugging them. I regret not doing that, tbh.

 

Yeah, shitty people exist in the world, but they are an isolated community and not representative of the world as a whole. There are extremist feminist groups as well who literally would be happy if all men died, does this mean society as a whole wants men to die?

[goDel]

Pssst... It reads like a direct response to zeff, though.

[zlemflolia]

i guess my thing is i am suspicious of the motives of people who claim to be 'anti feminist' or whatever, also men's rights, 'all lives matter', all that overly simplistic pseudo-equality crap that ignores anything that conflicts with its single minded ideology. it simply ignores the history and reality of how power is distributed and how it is wielded by those that have it. why are you putting your energy into this? so what if you find some feminists annoying. just ignore them. to be so actively against people who are just trying to exercise a degree of social awareness surely must come from a place of hatred and prejudice. it is one thing to criticise absurd behavior of when the SJW stuff goes to far, but an entirely different thing to be proudly and dogmatically anti feminist. you're being just as bad as the people you claim to despise. just go for a walk in the park and chill the fuck out, find a different hobby than mocking people who are ultimately coming from a place of compassion.

 

this isn't aimed at anyone in particularly btw i'm just using 'you' as a placeholder for whoever might fit in with what i'm talking about.

 

I don't despise anyone, I am morally opposed to the propagation of demonstrably untrue claims and misinterpreted statistics, especially when they are used to justify legislative action and social change.

 

Furthermore, the talking points of feminist ideology are used to minimize the concerns men face. "Women are the oppressed gender, check your privilege!" is so commonly claimed that men are no longer allowed to point out the privileges women have, and the disadvantages men face due solely to their gender

 

Nobody points out that if a man wants to acquire the lifestyle provided by a profession, he must enter that profession and do the job. But if a woman wants to acquire that same lifestyle she can either enter that profession and do the job, or marry a man who does the job. Realistically men do not have that privilege to the same extent that women do, on average, because women rarely "marry down" economically.

 

 

And the fact that some people are morally opposed to pointing out things like this, the fact that they choose to deny this reality to subjugate the truth finding drive of their inner subconscious and promote their own cognitive dissonance, helps ideologically feminist claims that run contrary to this propagate further, since they face less opposition, or at least the opposition they face is denied by society as a whole and those who accept it are ridiculed

 

But yes I should stand by passively and just relax, none of this affects me right

[Candiru]

i guess my thing is i am suspicious of the motives of people who claim to be 'anti feminist' or whatever, also men's rights, 'all lives matter', all that overly simplistic pseudo-equality crap that ignores anything that conflicts with its single minded ideology. it simply ignores the history and reality of how power is distributed and how it is wielded by those that have it. why are you putting your energy into this? so what if you find some feminists annoying. just ignore them. to be so actively against people who are just trying to exercise a degree of social awareness surely must come from a place of hatred and prejudice. it is one thing to criticise absurd behavior of when the SJW stuff goes to far, but an entirely different thing to be proudly and dogmatically anti feminist. you're being just as bad as the people you claim to despise. just go for a walk in the park and chill the fuck out, find a different hobby than mocking people who are ultimately coming from a place of compassion.

 

this isn't aimed at anyone in particularly btw i'm just using 'you' as a placeholder for whoever might fit in with what i'm talking about.

 

as for the rape culture thing zeff that's sort of where i draw the line, it's a little too much for me, but i'm not going to go out of my way to fight it or deny that plenty of people do not take it seriously. many of the people that are very vocal about anti-rape stuff have been or know someone close to them that has experienced some form of awful sexual violence, i can imagine that would make people feel very strongly about it.

 

But I think you'll notice, if you look, that the vast majority of these people are NOT coming from a place of compassion. They've just noticed that if they fit the demographic of an oppressed minority(whether or not the issues actually affect them), they can take advantage of gullible peoples' protective instincts and paint themselves as more knowledgeable of the ways of the world. "I'm so real, I've experienced hardship". And no one else has actual experience on these matters because of the way they look. Meanwhile the adults look on and roll their eyes, wondering how they will deal with actual problems once their parents stop wiping their asses for them.

[zlemflolia]

as for the rape culture thing zeff that's sort of where i draw the line, it's a little too much for me, but i'm not going to go out of my way to fight it or deny that plenty of people do not take it seriously. many of the people that are very vocal about anti-rape stuff have been or know someone close to them that has experienced some form of awful sexual violence, i can imagine that would make people feel very strongly about it.

 

Yes rape is a horrible thing and rapists should be punished, but the idea that rape as a whole is viewed as acceptable by society and even encouraged is absolutely ridiculous. No thinking person can accept this as truth. And that is what the claim of rape culture is

 

Furthermore, issues that draw extreme emotions from people don't have a special golden status whereby people can't criticize extremist calls to action as a response to said issue

[caze]

A lot of this current 'alt-right' media as you inaccurately call it (while it does contain conservatives and others on the right, it's definitely a broader movement, also containing left wing liberals (social democrats as we'd call them in europe), to classical liberals and libertarians) is part of a broader fight between irrational authoritarianism and rational individualism that has it's roots in the post war political realignment, and importantly how that has played out in universities (I'm talking specifically about the likes of Adorno and Marcuse, who's legacy of anti-rational intellectual diarrhea now stinks up the majority of US campuses).

 

This is a great and funny talk highlighting the dichotomy (by one of the writers of that great article in the Atlantic recently about the coddling of US students):

 

[zlemflolia]

yeah i guess i was extrapolating on some of the points i was inferring from his argument and relating it to similar lines of 'logic' i have read on the net, but i don't want to conclusively say anything one way or another about zeff because it's not really about him, it's about where i feel like he's coming from.

 

This is the attitude that needs to stop.

 

It doesn't matter where things come from, it doesn't matter what ideology a set of beliefs are a part of, it doesn't matter what motivation a person has for saying something

 

All that matters is whether they are true and representative of reality.

 

A person can be a dumb fuck, a complete racist misogynist asshole who hates women and black people and Jews and is a Nazi sympathizer, but if they say 1+1=2, well they aren't wrong. And when they point out that someone else is claiming that 1+1=3 and they are wrong, well once again - they aren't wrong in that statement.

[goDel]

Wow, you really live in a world of black and white falsehoods. Something is either true or false? Are you a computer?

 

Interesting talk by haidt btw

[zlemflolia]

Wow, you really live in a world of black and white falsehoods. Something is either true or false? Are you a computer?

 

Interesting talk by haidt btw

 

Obviously there is in between, some claims can be true in some aspects and false in others. But nice misrepresentation of what I said

[goDel]

I think its just funny how you describe it like theres something between true and false, as if those are cosmological constants. Theres this bit about epistemological humility in the haidt talk posted by caze. You might want to look into it. It might help softening those edges.

[zlemflolia]

Its just funny how you describe it like theres something between true and false, as if those are cosmological constants. Theres this bit about epistemological humility in the haidt talk posted by caze. You might want to look into it. It might help softening those edges.

 

I highly value epistemological humility and skepticism and that is actually exactly what I'm asking for. I specifically stated earlier "If the fact aren't there to support your claim, stop parading them around as if they're set in stone and then attempting to influence public policy with them"