Sunshine Mary and I Have Something In Common

It's not simply that we're both emotionally labile middle aged bottle blondes who look at least ten years younger than our chronological ages. 

No, what Sunshine Mary and I have in common is that we're both absolutely flummoxed by the new technology. 

Really, old bags like Sunshine Mary and me have no business on the Internet because we can't for the life of us figure out how the darned thing works.  It's clearly all too much for our age-addled hamster brains to absorb.

When I read that the author of SunshineGary -- that arrogant sprout! -- had ridiculed SSM for having the internet skills of her 91 year old great-grandmother, I felt a certain pang of empathy for Mary.  After all, if I had known anything, I wouldn't have gotten doxxed, would I?  Some people are so mean, aren't they? Probably because they're jealous of our accumulated womanly wisdom. That's why I am going to take a leaf from Sunshine Mary's good book and start praying for them.

I didn't know Mary was renouncing her blogging addiction vocation until this morning, when I checked my oh-so-modest stats to discover a dozen readers popping in from a link on Sunshine Mary's blog.  Since I've only mentioned Miss Mary a couple of times*, I was puzzled.  Imagine my surprise when the link took me directly to her more "exclusive" Word Press blog in which she had posted an extremely lengthy and incoherent "farewell" to her most special fans.  Embedded in this byzantine (and to an "outsider," incomprehensible) post was a link to a comment an anonymous reader, a former acquaintance of Mary's,  had posted here on my (her words) "batshit blog" many moons ago.

It seems to have taken Mary a full day to figure out what she had done ("Oops!"), at which point she set her blog to "private," but the readers keep trickling in, now from a site called Get Off My Internets. 

If I'd known most of my traffic would come from people so hungry to read about Sunshine Mary (and JudgyBitch), I'd have blogged more about them.  

Lordy, lordy, the manosphere IS all about the red pill women, isn't it?
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* I just can't get into that Christian submissive red pill wife melodrama!  It's too kinky for a vanilla "hetero-flexible" feminist like me!

Trolling in the Manosphere

The other day I received an e-mail from a gentle reader who had just tumbled into the toxic waste dump that is the manosphere.  Specifically, she had found an article on Return of Kings by one "Raywolf" that purported to expose the cruel, bestial nature of womankind.  Although the article itself is horrible, it's pretty much run of the mill fodder for a website run by Roosh, and hardened veteran readers of the New Misogynists, like myself, will hardly raise an eyebrow.  This gentle reader, however, had then made the fatal error of reading the Comment Section.  (There is good reason that PZ Myers often implores his readers, "Don't read the comments!  Don't read the comments!")

But Gentle Reader had no way of knowing that she was proceeding into ever more dangerous terrain where no novice should venture without a seasoned guide (or at least a torch, a strong hand to hold, and a barf bag).  

She discovered comments by someone calling himself "Ruler" that disturbed even the other commentators since "Ruler" was clearly extolling the virtues of rape and was actually using that word, "rape."  (Because while the act of rape is fun, natural, and necessary, the word "rape" is generally verboten -- unless, of course, it is used to explain how rape is not "rape.")

I took a quick peek at the comments, and didn't know what the hell to think, so I turned the matter over to the webmistress of Bodycrimes, who is, like, five times smarter than I am, for her take on what "Ruler" was all about.  She graciously dashed off a brilliant assessment of the post, "Raywolf," and "Ruler" that I am re-posting here.  Please read it and please, please do not go over to the article on Return of Kings; rest assured the relevant passages have been summarized and extrapolated here:

Does misogyny cause reading problems?

I’ve been so busy lately I’ve mostly stopped reading Manosphere websites, much to the relief of Mr BC. But this morning I received an email about an article, so I went and took a look. The article in question confirmed my opinion, once again, that hard-core misogynists have something of a reading problem.

They want so badly to believe whatever it is that they’re reading is true, that they literally fail to comprehend what’s right in front of them.

The article in question is ‘Women Can’t Control Their Animal Instincts’ over at Return of Kings.com, written by one ‘raywolf’. Basically, the article is your common-or-garden women-hating tripe. Raywolf starts with an anecdote about how a pet lioness took a swipe at someone, to establish the fact that women can’t be trusted, and then he starts riffing on how women have had a negative impact on his own life.

None of his anecdotes make him look good. He details a broken marriage that was partly based on him marrying someone so he could get a diplomatic passport. (Thus proving he was much too young and dumb to marry, as he evidently didn’t realise – and perhaps still doesn’t – that the only non-spousal family members who can get an ‘A1′ passport are legal dependents a.k.a. children.) Then he talks about being taken advantage of by a flaky flatmate, and then about his relationship with a psycho woman who compelled him to make poor business decisions, which is why he missed out on being part of the global enterprise his former business partner then went on to build.

In other words, RayWolf is the last person any young man with prospects should be taking life advice from. Still, readers were quick to congratulate him on writing such an insightful and helpful article, as RoK readers are wont to do.

And then the weird thing happened.

A commenter called ‘Ruler’ came along and wrote this:

Men are gods and women are less than soulless beasts. But men are partly controlled by biology as well, in the matter of sex, as raywolf says. While rape where a male is the victim is a monstrous, unnatural act, men have a deep-seated, completely natural, biological need to rape girls and women, and should never be shamed or punished for this basic male right and need…

Now that’s some hard core misogyny right there! So hard core, that it even upset some RoK readers, who took ‘Ruler’ to task for advocating rape. This is RayWolf’s reply:

You have to be careful how you word statements like this….. the original point of a marriage contract was to show the women had offered herself up to the man, as and when he felt like it….. thus a man could basically force himself on his woman….. and women do actually like that kind of thing in the right context….. princesses were married off because it suited the politics of the day, and essentially their new husband ‘raped’ them on their wedding night…. (so much for the Disney princess fantasy…. ) but after a while the woman got experienced and grew to like it…. but none of this means you can go trolling the streets at night for pretty young things…… NO WAY!

In other words – way back when, aristocrats regularly raped one another, to their mutual satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean us plebs today could or should do it!

Nothing daunted, Ruler cheerfully responds by saying:

OK, good point. Don’t rape. But it is every man’s biological need to force sex on girls of his choosing, teaching her that she is less than nothing and is only here to serve men. And I am clearly not a troll, as I am only repeating what many on here have said, just mistakenly used the word “rape”.

See what Ruler did just then? Outed himself/herself as a troll. S/he gives it away right smack in the middle of a clearly sarcastic comment. At least one reader did understand it was a troll at work. And RayWolf was promptly called out at least once for suggesting that women grow to like forced sex, which is somewhat heartening to see.

RayWolf should have stopped at that point. The conversation was getting close to advocating violence and some readers were clearly uneasy. But RayWolf didn’t pick up on the tone. Which led him to write this:

Actually [forced sex] works brilliantly and i’ve tried it with girlfriends…. you obviously have to know them well, but forcing yourself on them, and forcing yourself inside her when she’s still tight, dry and trying to resist makes for great sex, and is very alpha…. the marriage contract was originally all about this act… AND… in my opinion the reason that most LTRs fail is because men don’t have the balls to do this more often… although admittedly it can be hard if she’s in a boner killing mood…..

Oh dear. Tricked into revealing his unsavoury sexual practices by someone who was obviously a troll.

Just why are young men taking advice from this man again?

This is something to bear in mind when reading the manosphere: it is riddled with trolls.  In other words, these guys are often hoaxing each other.  Who is "Ruler" and what is he/she playing at?  We can probably assume he/she is a "manosphere antagonizer" if not a "feminist sympathizer."  On the other hand, he may just be a bored lonely dude with a couple of hours to kill who, due to his own low esteem, finds it validating to "prove" he is smarter than a bunch of morons.  

And furthermore, as Ms. Bodycrimes points out, why are RoK's readers so eager to take advice from some random dude ("raywolf") who admits his own life, in every respect, is completely fucked up?  Why do they cluster at the odoriferous feet of Roosh, whose life by any rational measure and by his own admission is pretty damn miserable and unsatisfying, and whose central ambition at this point is to persuade Russia to take him in?

Once I had read Ms. Bodycrimes' post, I couldn't believe how I hadn't spotted the trollery myself!  Maybe because, no matter how hard I try, I cannot understand what motivates the New Misogynists, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by adopting such bleak, amoral philosophies.

But paranoia is infectious.  As soon as I realized that "Ruler" was a troll, it made me wonder if my Gentle Reader was, too.  Was Gentle Reader one of Ruler's alters?  Because what could be more delightfully malicious than to get me to respond to a troll's comments by bewailing the new depths RoK had sunk to? Trolling x 2!

And guess what?  Gentle Reader really was a gentle reader, after all. The wolf in sheep's clothing was, after all, a lamb. Thank you, Gentle Reader, and I'm sorry I doubted you. 

By the way, if you are interested in following the New Misogynists, I advise you to start by reading "secondary sources" like David Futrelle's manboobz or any of the blogs listed to the right.  This helps "filter" the content and places it firmly in the mocking or critical light it deserves.  Direct exposure to the manosphere can be psychologically traumatizing for the uninitiated.  I'm serious!

Meanwhile, the sun is shining and my papers are calling, and bless us everyone.

Transmisogyny = Misogyny Squared

"AkioFlip" is so fearful that he might be unknowingly seduced by a postoperative transsexual woman that he writes a post on Matt Forney's website practically begging transsexual women to stay away from him.  As usual, a "manosphere" post reveals more about its author's tenuous grasp of his own "masculinity" than any objective reality.  A guy like Mr. Flip is so afraid that he might be attracted to a trans woman that he puts the onus on her to announce her "trans" nature to the world like a leper ringing a bell.

The trope of the "deceptive tranny" is so embedded in our popular psyche that it is difficult to think of a movie or book that features a trans woman character that does not, to some degree, reference it.  

Even Emily Yoffe over at Slate recently addressed a question (rather horribly) about a family squabble instigated by a trans woman's "failure" to disclose her trans status in a manner deemed timely by the writer. 

Akio? Mr. Flip? envisages bands of roving trans women "on the prowl trying to have sex with heterosexual men," who feel "they have full right to violate straight men who wouldn't otherwise have sex with another man." 

Mr. Flip is so preoccupied with the statistically remote possibility he might be fooled by some mythical predatory trans woman that he actually links his readers to a photograph of a vaginoplasty.  He has, no doubt, spent many hours anxiously scrutinizing such photos for evidence of some "telling" feature that distinguishes a trans woman's vulva from any other woman's, either in appearance or function.  (Of course, if the surgery was competently performed, even a gynecologist can't tell by superficial examination, never mind a typical "manospherean", whose familiarity with female anatomy we should not presume.*

He writes that "having their penises removed, taking hormones and proclaiming, I'm a woman, is enough to become a real woman."

He seems utterly unaware that many trans women never have surgery (whether by choice or financial constraints or age/health conditions).  Some trans women don't even take hormones.  And yet they are women too --  not because they "claim" to be, but because they have been born with an unconscious, and almost certainly hardwired, gender identity that is at odds with their genitalia.

The fact that a certain percentage of the population is (and always has been) transsexual forces us cis-gendered folks to acknowledge that a person's gender identity develops to some (as yet unknown) extent independent of chromosomal configuration.  The fact that trans sexuality exists (not only in humans but other animals) certainly makes me ponder what it is, exactly, that supports my own conviction that I am, indeed, "a woman."  Sure, I can look down and see my genitals match my internal sense of self, but I know that even if I woke up tomorrow with a six inch clitoris and a full beard, I would not feel any less "female."  I have had a hysterectomy and no longer produce estrogen, but ain't I a woman?  My vagina, breasts, fat distribution and passion for bright nail polish do not define my gender, although the fact that everything "matches" makes my life easier.  Does Akio Flip's penis define his "manhood?" (Wait, better not answer that, I'm afraid what the answer might be.)

"Cis-gender" may in Matt Forney's opinion be just a politically correct way of defining "normal," but in actuality it's a very specific and invaluable term that allows us to conceptualize and discuss gender more accurately.  It's an important word because if science and human experience tell us anything, it's that gender is a lot more complicated than we realized. And that Mother Nature loves diversity, even if her children don't always.

Mr. Flip cites Janice Raymond's notorious rad-fem screed, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, to support his view that transsexual women are not accepted by the lesbian community either.  In fact, this book is widely dismissed as a kind of hysterical historical curiosity and the philosophy it outlines is widely rejected by most feminists.  Of course, TERFs still exist, but they are as much dinosaurs as the new misogynists are.  Mainstream feminists are gradually but inexorably moving in the direction of embracing their trans sisters, in part due to the activism and educational efforts of transsexual women like Julia Serano and Janet Mock, and because most "mainstream" feminists are committed to inclusion, respect and tolerance for everyone.

According to Mr. Flip, "Shemales have tried to argue that our aversion for transsexualism is a by-product of our gender roles, which according to them were assigned by artificial social constructs."  How many lies can be packed into one sentence?  First off, there are many cultures that have no particular "aversion for transsexualism."  Second, I have never read any trans writer argue that all "gender roles... were assigned by artificial social constructs."

Mr. Flip claims that "anyone who requires advanced medical procedures to “realign” their entire physiological makeup isn’t in any position to deem what is or isn’t natural."  This will be news to anyone who has undergone medical treatment for any systemic condition.  It also vastly overstates the complexity of the kind of medical intervention most transsexual women require to "align" their bodies.  Transforming a penis and scrotum into a clitoris, vagina and labia requires expertise, but is surprisingly "simple" -- perhaps not surprising, after all, in view that male and female genitalia are highly parallel structures.

Mr. Flip argues that the "evolutionary reasons for the distinction between male and female remain."  Again, his assumption that all trans women elect to have surgery that sterilizes them is fallacious.  My partner has five biological grandchildren (so far).  Despite being a transsexual woman, she has certainly outperformed me in terms of reproductive success.

Mr. Flip encourages trans women to seek acceptance in the arms of "gay and bisexual men," ignoring the fact that gay men are by definition not interested in having sex with women and in fact generally evince a strong preference for "masculine" partners.  Although transsexual women sometimes emerge from the "drag queen" community, the conflation of feminine performance and feminine gender identity is an endless source of confusion and obfuscation.

Mr. Flip also implies that all transsexual women are attracted to men, which is obviously not the case.  The sexual orientation of trans women -- like women in general -- is all over the map.  Many identify as lesbians.  Some are strictly straight.  In terms of preference, a number are somewhat fluid (for lack of a better term, "bisexual").  I've met trans women who are only interested in other trans women, or who wind up partnered with trans men.  And I'm confident they are represented in the asexual community as well.

Mr. Flip claims that "most straight cisgender men... gag at the mere mention of kissing a so-called transgender woman."  If that is true, it is a measure of those men's internalized homophobia and fragile sense of their own heteronormativity.  The fact is, a lot of straight men (and lesbians) are attracted to women they know to be trans.  They're attracted to them for the same reason they are attracted to other women:  because they're beautiful, because they're feminine, because they're clever, because they're strong, authentic people who are often more self-aware and more compassionate by virtue of their own personal gender struggles.  And a lot of them are coming out of the closet too, despite efforts of people like Mr. Flip to "shame" them too.

I appreciate the trans woman in my life because, having lived the first half of her life "as a man," she can give me insights into what it is like to be socialized as a man, and yet because she explicitly identifies as a woman, she inspires me to embrace my own feminine nature. Trans people have so much to teach us cis-genders about what it means to be a Man or a Woman.

Mr. Flip concludes his post by reassuring trans women he doesn't mean them any harm, while at the same time warning them that "the average heterosexual... if he learned he had sex with one of you... would scream, become physically ill, and maybe even try to kill you."  [italics mine]

Yep, the good ole "panic defense," the one that (almost) got Gwen Araujo's murderers off the hook. Wow, blaming violence on the sexuality of victims.  Where have we heard that before?  Sorry, buddy, that shit don't fly anymore.

It's posts like this that contribute to the disproportionate risk trans women face as victims of violence.  Like most of what is posted in the "manosphere," it is hate speech, straight up, pure'n' simple, and not even thinly disguised.  

Here's a young trans woman's humorous response to a Return of Kings article, "8 Ways to Spot a Transsexual."  As for me, I have given up on trying to identify transsexuals since I find I am dead wrong at least half the time and since I have been misgendered myself more than once, a phenomenon I attribute to "trans-by-association."
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* Hey, speaking of which, remember "The Thirty Types of Pussy?"

Light Housekeeping

I was getting my hair colored at the beauty school yesterday.  The students always do a nice job and it's certainly affordable, but the client pays in time.  It can take close to three hours all told, although most of that time is just sitting in a chair waiting for the chemistry to happen.  So I usually remember to BMOB (Bring My Own Book) -- but yesterday I forgot.  With a sense of foreboding, I surveyed the literature piled up around the coffee urn.  Fortunately, amongst the stained and tattered copies of old Us and Today's Spa, I found a current issue of Esquire.  Actual reading material.  Score!

I hadn't read Esquire for a long while.  I can't tell you what a relief it was, after a year sounding the depths of the "manosphere", to read a mainstream "men's lifestyle" magazine.  I scanned the issue:  the return of the "cocktail cuff" (whatever that is), a lame joke attributed to a beautiful woman I've never heard of, a Prada suit made of flower-printed brocade that maybe Jared Leto could pull off  -- the usual fare. Then I stumbled on a column by Stephen Marche, whom I'd also never heard of, but which caught my eye since he seemed to be the magazine's resident "gender" expert.  It was an interesting article about what a freak show media depictions of masculinity have become.  I really wanted to tear it out and take it home, but I restrained myself. 

When I got home and read more of Marche, I learned he had written an article a few months ago, "The Case For Filth," that had got bloggers a-bloggin'.  I'm late to the party as always, but the topic is one that got me thinking since I often hear women bitching and moaning about how their husbands slack off in the house cleaning department.

Basically Marche's thesis was that the fact that wives are still doing more housekeeping than their husbands is primarily a matter of the women's choice.  And the solution to the endless wrangling over who does the lion's share of household chores is for both parties to relax, kick back, and embrace a bit of mess.

 Frankly, I agree with him.  Of course I'll admit that I'm a perfectly lousy housekeeper.  Because I'm a spinster, I can't really blame the fact that my house is in a chronic state of disarray on my husband + children.  (So I blame my dogs, LOL.)

The fact is, I don't give a damn.  There are two tasks I will never have time to do: ironing and dusting.  I rather subscribe to Quentin Crisp's philosophy, that after seven years, a house just can't get dirtier. And seriously, folks, if I can't run it through the dishwasher or the washing machine, I don't want it.

I do have a "zero growth" policy:  for every book, every can of food, every piece of clothing I acquire, I try to toss out something that takes up an equivalent amount of space.  And I like to be able to locate my stuff, so I maintain highly structured piles of crap.  My house isn't so much cluttered as it is just plain dirty. 

On the other hand, I do like to be personally clean, so I have no problem keeping up with laundry and washing dishes.  But everything else can go to hell.

BTW, although I'm not married, I have cohabited with various people over the years.  And we never argued about housekeeping.  Once in a while, I would pick up a boyfriend's sock and throw it in the laundry pile, and if he wanted it washed, he knew where it was.

This laissez-faire attitude could be a problem in the future though.  My girlfriend is kind of a neat freak.  If we ever move in together, I'm going to have to clean up my act, or else we're going to have to move into adjoining units in a duplex (and I probably don't have to tell you that I favor the latter option).

Anyway, poor Stephen Marche!  The ladies really took after him. First, Amanda Macotte took him to task.  Another female blogger pitied his wife.  Some women railed, Think of the children! Think of the germs!  It went on and on:  Obviously, this topic touches quite a nerve -- a source of angst and endless wrangling that I, as a barren spinster, am blithely oblivious to.  

Here's my take on Housework: it's kind of like Sex.  With sex, the one with the least desire controls the show, whereas with housework, the one who is least fastidious gets to opt out.  This isn't so much a man/woman conflict as it is a slob/clean freak conflict.

I must say that I thought the study Marche cites that suggests women who out-earn their spouses do MORE domestic tasks rather interesting.  And it supports my theory that part of the reason wives continue to do the lion's share of household duties is because they don't really want to forfeit their "traditional feminine" roles.

Matt Forney: Not a Guy, Not a Male, But a MAN

Ah, here goes Matt Forney again, revealing to the world how cripplingly, heartbreakingly insecure he is.  In his latest post, "The Myth of Female Intelligence," Matt explains that, just as womanly self-esteem causes his dick to wilt, "girls who tout their intelligence" make him "nauseous."  Furthermore, Matt feels confident in asserting that he feels that way, ergo all men feel that way.

Anyway, I have no reason to doubt Matt when he claims that in all his 25 years he has only met one girl who was smarter than he was.  That is because I am willing to bet that the number of girls Matt has "known" (not in the biblical sense, merely those who have willingly interacted with him for an extended period of time) can be counted on the fingers of just one of his damp, pudgy little mitts. 

Matt supports his assertion that female intelligence is a myth by arguing, among other things, that girls pick "soft majors like English... where there are no standards."  Hey, wait a minute, I thought Matt was an English major!  (BTW, I myself was an anthropology major because, believe it or not, I thought a social science major was more "practical" than one in the humanities -- but then, I am not going to argue that I am smarter than Matt Forney...)

The notion that women are valued for their intelligence is "laughable" according to Matt, although I must say, in my experience, intelligent men tend to prefer intelligent partners, if for no other reason than to validate their own smarts.  I mean, what fun is it if she doesn't appreciate how witty you really are?  What's the point of being able to make references to "Petruchio" and "Kate" if she's never read Shakespeare?  

"As men, it is our responsibility to bring girls back to their proper place. To lead them into their natural roles as wives and mothers. We men do not choose or reward girls for their clown college degrees, their meaningless cubicle jobs... We reward them for their willingness to please us and make us happy ...  No amount of phony education or career “success” will scratch that deep itch in a girl’s soul: the desire to serve a man.  Not a “guy,” not a “male”: a man." 

A man like Matt Forney, of course.  In my mind's eye, he is typing all this while holed up in his childhood bedroom in his parents' house somewhere in upstate New York, waiting for his mom to call him downstairs for dinner, perhaps mashed potatoes and meatloaf?  But no worries: after several years of nonstop blogging, he is generating almost enough income to support himself thanks to the mysterious "unethical" gig he has recently scored.  With a little more effort, he will soon be able to "reward" that elusive "suppliant" female of his fantasies...

Oh, Matt, never give up on your dreams.

This Alpha's Got Solid Game

Why Blog

Kate Harding, whose Shapely Prose was perhaps the most beloved and influential feminist blog ever ever ever, last year wrote an article "That's All She Wrote" about why she decided to "retire" from blogging (and it wasn't only because she got a column in Salon and a book deal, either).  

"I occasionally teach Blogging 101 classes now, even though I haven’t had an active blog in almost three years. The first thing I tell my students is: Do not even bother to blog unless you find it fun or someone is paying you for it. Those are the only two good reasons to do it. The second thing I tell them is: Probably no one will pay you for it. Fun is actually the only good reason to blog."

"Fun" is a subjective concept, isn't it?  There are certainly a lot of activities that are worth doing that aren't necessarily fun ("physical exercise" springs to mind).  I would rather substitute "engaging" for the word "fun" here. I have to admit that reading and writing about the manosphere initially captured my interest, even my fascination.  With over a year of exposure, my interest has waned considerably.  Once a person gets inured to the jaw-dropping horror that passes for discourse on most manosphere sites, they get mind-numbingly tedious.  And depressing.

I honestly don't know how David Futrelle keeps it up.  P.Z. Myers has likened Futrelle's job to "mining for turds under an outhouse.  You simultaneously think, “OMG, that’s the easiest mission in the world” and “OMG, that’s the most horrible mission in the world.”

I sincerely appreciate Futrelle for being willing to do what he does, because God knows someone needs to monitor these groups and keep them in the proper perspective (that is, viewed strictly through the prism of mockery).

I started a blog to practice my writing skills, but until I ran into the "manosphere" I must say "feminism" was not a subject I had much interest in at all.  I'm still not very interested in reading much feminist theory.  I may never get around to reading The Feminine Mystique and I will almost certainly never read The SCUM Manifesto, Andrea Dworkin, or other radical feminist works.  Last year a friend kept pressing me to read The End of Men and I refused for no better reason than I really detest that hyperbolic title.  So it seems rather artificial and strained to be characterized or encouraged to characterize myself as primarily a "feminist."

One of my favorite bloggers, Eseld Bosustow, announced today her intention to write about whatever she damn well pleases.  She is also burned out on the MRA.  Her appetite for logic and constructing clean, tight logical arguments is, of course, wasted on responding to intellectual pygmies.  I hope she'll keep writing, though -- on whatever topic she fancies.  Similarly, I hope Ms. Bodycrimes returns to writing on the far-reaching theme ("the ways that the body intersects with commerce") that initially inspired her blog. 

For the kind of writing I am interested in, which is personal response, bordering on confessional, a blog that is now inextricably linked to my true identity is probably just about the worst medium.  I can no longer do the kind of writing I want to do here, since I am now constrained by the knowledge that everything I write Can and Will Be Used Against Me.  And hence I have developed a kind of visceral distaste for blogging in general.  

And so it comes down to Ms. Harding's point:  If it's not fun, and you're not being paid for it, why do it?  To which I would add, if I have nothing particularly fresh or insightful to contribute, that hasn't already been said (by Ms. Harding and so many others), why bother?

And really, when it comes to the Men's Rights Movement, Ms. Harding has already said everything that ever needs to be said: "Fuck You Men's Rights Activists."