#ryking

The fun thing about the idea of misandry-as-a-systemic-thing is that it's complete fiction, so you can just make shit up about it and no one can call you on it.

The Misandrist Lodge is where misandrists gather to drink root beer out of a giant horn. There's one in every major city.

All misandrists learn to play the tuba at a young age, and enjoy doing donuts in the Zellers parking lot. 

There is secret misandrist software on roughly half of the satellites in Earth's orbit, including the moon.

Billy Ocean wrote the song "Get Out Of My Dreams (And Into My Car)" about misandrists.

It appears that after a huge petition (last I looked there were over 4000 signatures) Ryking was removed as a top politics editor for the politics tag. 

A much-needed shake-up of Tumblr #Politics editors has taken place today, less than a day after I post this documenting another editor's (Ryking) penchant for vile behavior (and echoing Jeff Miller's offer to resign if Ryking would do the same), and a petition to remove the same editor was circulated (and received thousands of signatures in only a matter of hours). 

Clearly, the Tumblr staff has acknowledged the problem... though Tumblr seems to have taken the throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach, as almost all editors have been replaced. Hopefully this means that the quality of the #Politics tag will improve as most of the bigger offenders are no longer editors. 

The composition of the current crop of editors is improved, but certainly not ideal. Letterstomycountry happily remains. Although we disagree philosophically on certain issues, he tends to be fair and smart. Professor Ari Kohen could hopefully be a good addition. Our past misunderstandings and disagreements aside, he certainly has the capacity to at least keep the posts relevant. Huskerred is another welcome addition who has evolved over the last year or so to become quite the thoughtful and considerate blogger. However, as far as I can tell, he is the only editor who is neither a leftist/Democrat or corporate (statist) media. Further, every single editor is sympathetic and supportive to the state at least in some form or another. In fact, there don't seem to be any actual (economic) libertarians or anarchists represented. And as an anarcho-capitalist, I may have been the first, but hopefully I'm not the last completely anti-statist editor of the tag.

Also, motherjones, who was part of the original batch of editors, has returned for a second go. 

I think the tag would be more interesting and better served if individual bloggers - and not media entities - with a greater variety of political perspectives were editors. 

If I find Ryking on my dashboard and your post is not criticizing him,

I understand that free speech, especially in a democratic society, is important as an impetus for change; speech is the only peaceful mechanism we have that is effective in bringing about political and social movements, or at least, bringing awareness to a possibility for such movements (i.e. Occupy). 

Violations of freedom of speech however serve to stamp out the spreading of those ideas. Such examples would be when the government arrests its citizens for speaking either in favor or against certain political leaders or philosophical ideas, or if people, in advocating their ideas, are regularly threatened or even murdered, yet the government does nothing to protect them. 

It is a sad, sad truth however that in our society, those who are able to employ free speech most effectively and most often seem to be only those of a certain demographic, a certain "white male" demographic. And this, I think, is most unfortunate because this particular, single demographic is allowed to represent all of us--women, the LBGT community, POF, those of "other" religions--to the rest of the world. And frankly, the only people that can best represent "Us" is, well, us. And, even more unfortunate, not every white male seems to have nice things to say about those who are unable to defend themselves in the public sphere. Thus, white men can say whatever they want on, for example, Fox News--Muslims are terrorists, women shouldn't have control over their own bodies, fetuses are people but gays are not--and anyone outside the white male sphere has trouble grabbing the microphone and denying such accusations. 

Let's stop pretending that there is no such thing as a white privilege, particularly, a white male privilege. And unfortunately, because many in that particular sphere have realized that they alone have the power of free speech, they can stretch the limit from what is free speech, or, open speech to express their opinions to bring about change, and just blatant sexist, racist, hate speech for the pure sake of seeing the world burn. 

And that is why I don't like Ryking. This is my employing of free speech to bring about change, and as a citizen of this society, it is my right and DUTY to bring about change when I see something going wrong: in this case, Tumblr's/Ryking's blanket statement of "free speech" to hide the fact that he is spreading blatant emotional harm to others. People like this are WAY off the "free speech" scale--and perhaps no such thing exists, perhaps there is no way to calculate what actually constitutes as free speech and "not free speech," but as a society, we still agree upon make these invisible lines, a social contract of sorts. It is clear that line has been crossed. Ryking's "free speech" isn't benefiting anyone. That it why a petition against him was created: not to remove his right to free speech, but rather, to remove the power he thinks he has that he thinks allows him to get away with hateful comments. 

If you want to hate on women, fine--those are your "daddy issues" to sort out. But don't you dare abuse your power and tell women that they deserve to be raped, especially, dare I say, to women who have already been through it.

Dianna Anderson writes about this week's setbacks for women, addressing both the contraception brouhaha and Ryking. Some excerpts:

Today started with Darrell Issa’s GOP Oversight committee on the birth control mandate and the religious exceptions to it for large organizations like religiously affiliated hospitals. This could be an entire blog post in itself, but it’s worth noting a couple of things:

1. There were no women on the panel giving testimony before Congress. Issa was requested to have at least one female testify, but refused on the grounds that it wasn’t a women’s rights issue, but a religious one. Yes, you read that right.

2. There were also no doctors on the panel, which allowed them to repeat the myth that birth control acts an abortifacient. It’s important to note that hormonal birth control only has the theoretical potential to do so (and this is if and only if you view a pregnancy as beginning at fertilization, not implantation). Restricting a necessary medication on the basis of a theoretical potential is kind of ridiculous, especially if the grounds you’re restricting it on are shaky to begin with (my ibuprofen has the theoretical potential to give me liver failure and kill me – do we say I can’t have it based on that idea?).

But fuck all if I'm not thrilled to see the big response to Stevie McFly's petition.