We Hunted The Mammoth: How a good feminist site got corrupted

[NotTerfNorCis]

A few years ago, We Hunted the Mammoth was a great resource against MRAs. Its founder, David Futrelle, was fearless in 'exposing the new online misogyny' - the world of men's rights activists, incels, MGTOWs (men going their own way) and PUAs (pick-up artists). Personally I'd go there several times a day for info and support.

Sure, the MRAs claimed Futrelle was a misogynist, and I did wonder if he wallowed too much in the filth he uncovered, but I liked the guy. He took a lot of flack for his beliefs.

Fast forward three and a half years. The site is now rancid. MRAs are yesterday's news - there's nothing much to say about them, beyond 'exposing' incels who sound like unhappy kids. The new target is gender critical feminists. I've just spent all day there before being banned. It's insane. A weird, twisted cult.

Did anyone else ever use We Hunted the Mammoth? What do you think of it now? Am I overreacting? Or was Futrelle always a bit dubious?

That's why my motto has gone from live and let live to no parasan. I've seen what happens when vital ground is ceded out of a desire to be "nice".

It's interesting to compare the language of the commenters on that stie to the language used here. It's either just straight up abusive - "fuck you", "go fuck yourself, TERF", or it's strangely infantile. One commenter said something like "biology is a heckin' lot more complicated than folks learned at school!" Meanwhile, on Mumsnet, people talk like normal human beings - it's so refreshing. And yeah, to chime in - this is exactly what happened to all the feminist sites that were big in the mid 2000s. Jezebel, Shakesville, Feministing, Feministe, Jezebel - they all got taken over by trans rights activists and had all the life sucked out of them.

I remember when a particularly nasty trans rights activist decided to camp out at Feministe. The entire tone of the place completely changed. Women were constantly falling over themselves to apologise for transphobia, and it was never good enough. So everyone left. And then this same person just moved on to Jezebel and did the same thing. This is why Mumsnet is such an important space.

I think ally-ism (completely made up word but bear with me) completely changed around the time of MeToo. MeToo required woke men to actually change their behaviour and give something up, rather than doing feminism for the sole purpose of doing feminists.

I'll never forget a conversation I had with a really, really lovely guy who I know well, which went along the lines of 'I mean Lonny, I just don't know if it's safe to chat people up at work anymore, what about the banter?'

It was these men that MeToo shone a spotlight on, rather than 'proper rapists'. And they didn't like it. That created a vacuum, which co-incided with the TRAs getting organised. IMHO. And the rest we know.

it's more likely to be a combination of personality disordered people always wreaking havoc on the groups they target, some women finding it hard to resist the programming to kiss men's arses, and the inadvisability of allowing men to lead feminist groups/spaces in the first place.

Personality disorders have certainly been a force. But both that and the push to genderism more generally come out of the intellectual climate IMO.

Personality disorders have been around always I suppose but it's not just in women's issues that suddenly people with these issues have been able to come into groups and demand that everyone validate them. It's happened all throughout the left and to a large extent in mainstream society.

But genderism is coming out of years of other narratives. People being told, for years, that the sexed body is not relevant or important, that men and women are the same, that reproductive role is a wholly private issue of no interest to society at large. Prt of that is a result of people actually being less aware because of small families and starting families later. Increased focus on creating our sense of self as an identity exercise, and that also being more and more about internally defined interests.

Even things like the discussion of non-gendered baby clothes. Many people conceptualise this as being because the sex of the baby is irrelevant, but what the older child likes is an important pointer to "who they really are". God forbid a boy who feels some inner alignment to wearing a skirt not have that option, or a girl not be able to wear trousers. People think this isn't just not that big a deal so why not, they think it is a transgression against identity. So what constitutes that - whatever it is, in people's minds it leads right to essentialism around random cultural norms.

I think if we see this as a conspiracy thing or even just an accident we are likely to be unable to really get past it. We need to unpick why so many people have accepted elements without a second thought.

I think it's a combination of rigidly enforced moral values on the left, the influence of post-modernism (nothing is really real), this generation's way of feeling special, individualism, and the internet, where people can choose a new identity very easily. It's a fad in my view but the damage it's doing to feminism is real.

Also most fads don't leave the people who follow them infertile and with other permanent physical consequences. Hair can be dyed back to its original color, piercings can be taken out, clothes are very easy to change. The side effects of years of puberty blockers and hormones are not so easy to get rid of, and that's only taking into account the damage done to the person directly involved rather than to those around them.

Don't you think girls shoyld be able to wear practical clothes like trousers tho?

Of course they should. And they should be able to do it without people suggesting that their taste in clothes ( or hairstyles, or toys, or hobbies) means that they must "really" be a boy and can only be happy if they mess their body up in pursuit of trying to be one physically.

Sexist: "women can't fly to the moon and womanly women don't want to"
Genderist: "if you want to fly to the moon you must really be a man"
Sex realist feminist: "of course you can fly to the moon (but don't forget to pack some tampons)"

This, great post!